Saudi Arabia has used its Public Investment Fund to invest more than $ 3.3 billion (that’s $ 3.3 billion for the more visual learners out there) in Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive and Activision Blizzard, Al Jazeera reported (h / t Eurogamer).
This move, undertaken by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (popularly called MBS), is equivalent to millions of shares in each company, a proper foothold in the video game industry, but relatively small part of the ownership.
The Crown Prince’s MiSK Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting, empowering and creating a healthy environment for young creative talents’ in Saudi Arabia, acquires a third-party interest late last year in the Japanese gaming company SNK, with the ultimate goal of eventually taking majority control of the iconic studio.
Although it is not explicitly part of MBS’s overall Saudi Vision 2030 plan – which on paper is about attracting investors and tourism, but essentially amounts to a propaganda campaign in the hope of portraying Saudi Arabia as’ a progressive nation rather than the oppressive, medieval monarchy that it really is – His recent revelations to the video game industry follow the same pattern as the investments in which his regime has invested sport, sports, en professional wrestling.
MBS was praised early in his office as crown prince as a reformer because, among other things, he had the right to run women. But his alleged role in order the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 and Saudi Arabia’s continued genocide of the Yemeni people (with the help of the United States and the United Arab Emirates) made him controversial on the world stage.
G / O Media can get a commission
Last summer, Riot was forced to pull out of a partnership with Saudi Arabia, what a would have seen League of Legends opportunity promotes the kingdom’s Incredibly dumb NEOM project, after the setback of the esports community.