Konvoy this week launched its Gaming Trade Report for the primary quarter of 2025, the place it revealed extra details about traits within the trade, together with enterprise capital offers and mergers and acquisitions throughout the globe. In accordance with the report, Konvoy predicts that the video games trade can be value $186 billion in 2026, a 4.7% improve year-over-year. It additionally exhibits data on the key offers within the trade, in addition to the consequences of the escalating detente between the U.S. and China.
The corporate stories that the video games trade noticed 43 mergers and acquisition transactions in Q1, with the 2 largest being Scopely’s $3.5 billion acquisition of Niantic’s gaming division, and Trendy Occasions Group’s $620 million acquisition of Plarium. It additionally notes that there have been 77 VC offers on this quarter — which was a 6% lower from the earlier quarter. Nevertheless, the whole quantity of VC funding was $373 million, which was a 35% improve quarter-over-quarter.
Josh Chapman, Konvoy managing associate, instructed GamesBeat in an interview, “Within the first quarter of 2025, North America noticed 53% of the gaming funding vs Asia which noticed solely 33% of the whole funding capital within the sector. The third runner up is Europe, but we see virtually zero funding or deal exercise out of Africa, South America, or Australia. The explanation for that’s largely on account of there not being native funding teams, as a result of there are recreation corporations in these areas however no native capital teams to construct up the native deal market. Wanting forward, we’re very assured that NA, Asia, and EU will stay the core places for gaming funding and deal exercise.”
One of many different main takeaways from the report issues the U.S.’s ban on Chinese language entities, together with the impact it had on video games equivalent to Marvel Snap and Conflict of Clans. Konvoy provides that it expects the U.S.’s scrutiny over entities in international locations equivalent to China to extend, and that this has the potential to have a big impression on the trade given how China is concerned in gaming. It additionally famous that Ubisoft is the newest gaming entity to simply accept cash from a Tencent, a Chinese language conglomerate.
GamesBeat requested Chapman in regards to the tensions between the 2 entities, and he responded, “The strain for US/China revolves round US video games requiring a gate-keeper in China and the video games out of China having open-entry to the US market. This imbalance, alongside the TikTok tensions, is the supply of the commerce tensions and the way it pertains to the gaming trade.”
Konvoy’s full Gaming Trade Report contains regional insights and is now obtainable on the corporate’s web site.
