From fatwas to ‘Fortnite’: Saudi Arabia’s $38-billion play to rule esports

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – As the Esports World Cup approached rapidly, the Foundation Office, which organized the tournament, was buzzing with employees who made qualifying matches and concluded the opening ceremony of the competition with an award pool of 70 million dollars.

The seven -week event as of July 8 is at the center of Saudi Arabia’s proposal to dominate the competitive game world and the video game industry in general. Mike McCabe, a senior game industry manager of the EWC Foundation, announced how Gamesmenism will affect every aspect of the event.

“Every team gets one of them,” he said, when he bought a metal figure made of two -co -triangle from his McCabe table.

He separated the middle triangle from the outer triangle. He said if a team wins a championship, the central piece would enter the cup and the other would be placed on a totem shown in the Saudi capital.

McCabe said, “If they lose, this great new pneumatic press is crushed, then put it at the bottom of the ground and the totem for next year,” he said.

“So even in the cup, there’s this big gamification.”

The central morality of the national game and espor strategy of the kingdom can be a $ 38 billion game aimed at positioning Saudi Arabia as a gülün global center in games and esports sector until 2030 and to increase the entrance to the country’s sports and entertainment world.

It is another element from Saudi Arabia to a tourism destination that can attract 150 million visitors annually from a poor monk kingdom for Puritan laws.

The effort goes beyond the leading espor contest-house competition in this summer tournament, or hosting Olympic Esports games for a 12-year period in 2027.

Under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia includes construction projects, the election framework of Vision 2030, the pioneer of an enthusiastic player. (“League of Legends” is his favorite, we were told.)

Neom, which is a futuristic megakite on the Red Sea coast, aims to become the “first real game center ın of the region according to a website with a campus, recording studios and visual effects for gaming development and visual effects. Riyadh, another Giga project near the city of Qiddiya had to be a private espor area of ​​17 city blocks with four arena and area for the regional center of Espor clubs and game companies.

The kingdom looked out. For the last few years, Savvy Games Group, a company belonging to the Public Investment Fund, has purchased approximately 40% of the global esports industry, including the game equivalent of the Electronic Sports League-NFL, according to SAVVY institutional materials.

Savvy, Culver City -based studio and “Tekel go!” The purchase, except for China, threw the US’s best mobile gaming publisher and fourth global knowledge. In May, “Pokemon Go!” Fund for $ 3.5 billion.

The amazing scale of the investment made Saudi Arabia impossible in the room in the room in the room in the room, especially in the US and Europe, which has fired about 34,000 people in the US and Europe in the last three years.

This, despite the charges of “game washing”, the kingdom, just like golf, tennis, boxing, wrestling and Formula 1 race, especially Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 killing and disintegration, Washington post colonist encourages esports to get away from the killing and disintegration of 2018.

The Portuguese team celebrates against the Spanish team during the FIFAe World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2024.

(Gonzalo Arroyo / FIFA through Getty Images)

Nevertheless, many emphasize that the main focus of the kingdom’s espor strategy is local, the plan to establish 250 play companies in Saudi Arabia, which will create 39,000 jobs in Saudi Arabia and contribute $ 13.3 billion to GDP by 2030.

“This is not just, ‘We will have a company related to a worldwide video game.’ How does this develop or grow the industry in the Middle Eastern countries, Derek Douk Douglas, the president of the video games group (CAA)? “This diversification and growth idea in the region is really based on the idea of ​​growth.”

This is not an easy task in a country where authorities once published a religious fatwa against Pokemon play cards. (The reason given is that they encourage evolution and gambling.) However, McCabe and other leaders in the new game industry here, according to the 2021 reports from the Boston Consulting Group, insist on two -thirds of 23 million people in Saudi Arabia.

“The game is very big everywhere, but here is very big at a different level, Mc said McCabe and not only because more than two -thirds of Saudi society are under 35 years of age. “There is a climatic element: it is really hot in summer and people spend a lot of time to play video games.”

Some local success stories, such as Muhammad Al-Dossary, who won the 2018 FIFA EWORLD Cup and is currently supported by the Royal Family and run a regular ESports team from all over the world, has emerged. In May, Falcons signed a partnership with Red Bull to become an official performance partner during the Esports World Cup this year.

Not all Sanguine about the Gilding Attraction of the Saudis. Geoguessr’s developers – a game you guessed, they are taking places based on Google Street View images, recently withdrawn from the Esports World Cup after the angry fans threatened to boycott the vote because of the kingdom’s record of human rights.

“You – our community – you made it clear that this decision is not compatible with what Geoguessr means,” he said.

In order to start a game development industry from scratch, the government established a Panoply of incubation machines and accelerators by partnership with international educational organizations such as Digiipe, a game -oriented university to attract Saudi entrepreneurs and willing developers. However, observers say that programs are struggling to obtain sufficient qualified participants and tend to focus on Riyadh, not throughout the country.

Others say that this has changed and that he has pointed out similar efforts in China and elsewhere before giving results for decades.

Douglas from CAA began to use China as an outsourcing for some engineering, but primarily began to use it for these great art houses, which were relatively cheap compared to the US and Western studios, ”Douglas said.

“To date, now trained individuals have one and a half generations to make video games. And that’s why we see a lot of new generation content from there.”

Last year, China released the first AAA title “Black Myth: Wukong olarak – that is, a hundred millions of budgets with advanced graphics and games; Douglas says the others are already on the pipeline.

Yannick Theler, General Manager of Steer Studios, a Riyadh -based game studio, a part of Savvy, is sure that the first locally Located AAA title is a matter of time beyond 2030.

“That’s why I came here: because of the holistic view [authorities] They’re getting to develop talent and ecosystem, “says Theler, who previously founded Ubisoft Abu Dhabi.

“Studios, academies, accelerators – we will need 10 years after putting everything,” he said.

A person who was initial is a 24 -year -old developer Abdulrahman Rashd, a developer who began to design maps for “Minecraft at the age of 12 and then began to design maps in the market’s market.

“To be honest, it was fun. It made a sense of purpose, because it makes things feel really good. And when we started making money, he changed our lives, ve he said, a founding partner became a figure stunned by the market about $ 1 million.

Rashd said, “At first they were classic Arab parents, and they say, ‘Why are you wasting your time in games, Rash Rashd said, laughing.

“But then they saw the money and said I had to continue.”

The Japan team gathered in 2024 on the second day of the FIFAe World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

(Gonzalo Arroyo / FIFA through Getty Images)

Rashd, who studied computer science at the university, was involved in a state -backed incubator and accelerator program called Saudi Game Champions. In order to be qualified, he and a friend joined a game jam around a theme that they had to design a game within three days; In this case, what they see as a pleasant.

Rashd, “We made a farming simulator from top to bottom. Why? Because it is really relaxing and honest in games,” he said.

He uses his time in Saudi game championships to develop a title called “Doznik olan, the first person’s action-adventure game. “Fight, raise, die, repeat and strengthen the monsters that change shape every time” slogan.

Rashd insists that the country is “crazy good talent ve and it is important that the government’s emphasis on creating local talent is important.

“To invest in our people, to bring someone from abroad to invest, to do the job,” he said.

He said it was simple to buy more designers like him:

“Only To do S-. Just go there and do something. “