Big deals.
Many mature industries trend toward consolidation as time goes on, and the video game business is no different. Big companies are bought and sold for massive sums of money.
But what are the biggest of the big buyouts? Here in this post, we’re rounding up the top 12 most expensive video game acquisitions of all time, a list that’s topped by Microsoft’s gargantuan $75.4 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard in what is far and away the biggest gaming deal in history. It’s also one of the biggest acquisitions–across all markets from oil and energy to technology. Coming in second was the surprise-announcement of EA selling itself to an investor consortium for $55 billion.
Microsoft actually makes the list three times, the most of any single company, spending more than $80 billion on video game buyouts since 2014. Another trend on this list is Saudi Arabia. The country’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) owns Savvy Games, which paid $4.9 billion to buy Scopely. Then, in 2025, Scopely paid $3.5 billion to buy Pokemon Go. Also in 2025, PIF was part of the above-mentioned investor consortium that bought EA.
In February 2026, it was reported that Savvy Games was in discussions with ByteDance to buy Moonton for as much as $7 billion. That deal has now been confirmed, and the total valuation was $6 billion.
12: Microsoft – Mojang – $2.5 billion (2014)
Before Microsoft bought ZeniMax or Activision Blizzard, the company made a gigantic purchase in 2014 for Mojang and the Minecraft series. Microsoft paid $2.5 billion for the studio and the franchise, and has since released new entries in the series, including Minecraft Legends most recently. Since Microsoft bought Mojang, it’s continued to release Minecraft games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms, rather than making them exclusive to Xbox. The company has said it would do the same for Call of Duty now that it also owns Activision Blizzard.
11: Sony – Bungie – $3.6 billion (2022)
Sony made a deal to buy the prominent FPS studio, Bungie, and with it the Destiny franchise. In 2022, Sony announced it would pay $3.6 billion to acquire Bungie and the Destiny series. Destiny is a beloved juggernaut, but Sony is obviously looking beyond that game as well and hoping Bungie will strike gold again with its future games. Not only that, but Sony has said it’s keen to lean on Bungie’s experience in the live-service department to help with PlayStation’s overall live-service push.
10: Scopely – Pokemon Go – $3.5 billion (2025)
In March 2025, Saudi Arabian-owned mobile developer Scopely announced that it’ll be acquiring Niantic’s video game division, paying $3.5 billion for the developer behind Pokemon Go. Also included in the proposed deal are several other Niantic titles, like Monster Hunter Now and Pikmin Bloom.
9: ByteDance – Moonton – $4 billion (2021)
In March 2021, TikTok owner ByteDance announced its games division, Nuverse, would pay $4 billion to buy the Shanghai-based game developer Moonton Technology. This is part of ByteDance’s push into the video game business and makes it more of a competitor with another Chinese company, Tencent. Moonton is best known for its MOBA Mobile Legends. It was reported by Reuters that Tencent made an offer for Moonton before ByteDance beat it.
8: Savvy Games Group – Scopely – $4.9 billion (2023)
In April 2023, the Saudi Arabia-owned Savvy Games Group purchased mobile and social game developer Scopely for $4.9 billion. You might not know Scopely by name, but the company has worked on games in juggernaut franchises like Star Trek, The Walking Dead, and Marvel. It’s also behind the game Stumble Guys, a colorful battle royale game that is seemingly inspired by Mediatonic’s Fall Guys.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has been making major investments in the gaming space through Savvy for some time already. In addition to buying Scopely outright, Savvy holds minority ownership positions in Capcom, Nexon, EA, and Take-Two. Savvy also owns 40 million shares of Activision Blizzard and no doubt netted a huge payday following Microsoft’s deal to buy Activision Blizzard. What’s more, Saudi Arabia owns more than 8% of Nintendo and is the Mario company’s largest outside investor. Savvy Games Group has major plans to continue to expand and create its own game development ecosystem, so watch this space for more.
7: Activision Blizzard – King – $5.9 billion (2015)
In 2015, Activision Blizzard announced it would buy Candy Crush developer King for $5.9 billion to help expand its footprint in the mobile games space. Candy Crush remains a juggernaut on mobile, and those revenues have been flowing to Activision Blizzard for years now. Now that Microsoft owns Activision Blizzard, Xbox company has taken ownership of Candy Crush and the numerous other mobile games Activision Blizzard is developing. In fact, Activision Blizzard has said it will make a mobile game for every one of its franchises.
6: Savvy Games Group – Moonton – $6 billion (2026)
In February 2026, it was reported that Savvy Games Group was in discussions with ByteDance to buy mobile game developer Moonton for $6 billion or as much as $7 billion.
In March, that deal was confirmed, valued at $6 billion.
Moonton CEO Zhang Yunfan will remain CEO when the deal closes, and that’s expected to happen in the coming months, Savvy told SCMP.
As some may recall, ByteDance bought Moonton in 2021 for $4 billion, so ByteDance was seemingly able to turn a relatively quick profit on the investment.
5: Microsoft – ZeniMax – $8.1 billion (2020)
Microsoft’s second-biggest purchase in the gaming space was the $8.1 billion it paid to acquire ZeniMax in 2020. ZeniMax is the parent company of Bethesda Game Studios, the makers of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, among others. Microsoft acquired all of ZeniMax’s teams and series, meaning Starfield, The Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout 5, the next Wolfenstein game, and more will be Microsoft games going forward. The transition wasn’t totally smooth, however, as Microsoft recently laid off staff on its games teams, including Bethesda. The deal has also generated some debate and discussion about Microsoft taking formerly multiplatform franchises and making them exclusive to Xbox.
4: Tencent – Supercell – $8.6 billion (2016)
Chinese internet giant Tencent has made a number of investments and acquisitions of studios around the world, and Clash of Clans developer Supercell is its biggest buyout of the bunch. In 2016, Tencent announced plans to acquire a majority stake in Supercell for about $8.6 billion. To put this number into perspective and as an example of the growing size of M&A activity in the video game sector, Tencent paid about $400 million to buy League of Legends developer Riot back in 2011.
3: Take-Two – Zynga – $12.7 billion (2022)
Grand Theft Auto and NBA 2K parent company Take-Two Interactive announced in January 2022 that it would purchase FarmVille giant Zynga for $12.7 billion. At the time, it was far and away the biggest acquisition in the history of video games, only to be outdone by Microsoft a few weeks later. In any event, Take-Two paid three times more than Disney did for Star Wars to help get a foothold in the lucrative and growing mobile games market through its acquisition of Zynga.
2. Investor Consortium – EA – $55 billion (2025)
On September 29, 2025 EA announced that it sold itself to an investor consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, and private equity company Silver Lake for a fee of $55 billion. EA CEO Andrew Wilson will remain CEO.
1: Microsoft – Activision Blizzard – $75.4 billion (2022/2023)
Microsoft announced its intent to purchase Activision Blizzard in February 2022 for the gargantuan sum of $68.7 billion. The technology giant spent a long time taking various steps to convince regulatory bodies to approve the deal, and it was finally approved in October 2023. The final purchase price was $75.4 billion.
