The sale of EA has spurred the gaming deal market, increasing its volume nearly 11 times
In the third quarter of 2026, game-related companies secured deals totaling $61.9 billion, as reported by Aream & Co. This is significantly higher than the same period in 2025, when the figure was just $5.7 billion.
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In its report, Aream & Co., using data from InvestGame, analyzed three types of deals: M&A, private investments, and public offerings. Note that the statistics include both closed deals and recently announced ones.
A bit about each type is detailed below.
- Nearly all the money for the quarter was attributed to M&A, which stands for mergers and acquisitions, totaling $57.8 billion (+1244%). This result was achieved largely due to a single high-profile deal — the sale of Electronic Arts to a consortium of investors led by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund for $55 billion.
- The volume of private investments increased to $2.8 billion (+235%). This growth is largely due to investors' interest in companies involved with AI in some capacity. For example, the largest amount was raised by the GPU marketplace Vast.ai ($596 million). Among purely gaming teams, the Turkish studio Circle Games led with investments totaling $25 million, which were provided in part by Tencent.
- From July to September 2026, game-related companies placed or announced placements on the stock exchange totaling $1.3 billion (+122%). The biggest event of the quarter was Bilibili's issuance of $500 million in convertible senior notes.
- Overall, the gaming industry conducted 204 deals during the quarter: 137 (+9%) were private investments, 54 (+6%) were M&A, and 13 (+30%) were public offerings.