Tamatem acquires Istanbul-based Playable Factory in move to build AI-first global gaming platform from Abu Dhabi

Tamatem, the leading mobile games publisher in the Middle East and North Africa, has fully acquired Playable Factory, an Istanbul-founded interactive advertising platform that has delivered more than 30 billion ad impressions, in a deal that pushes the Abu Dhabi-headquartered company beyond publishing and into the global advertising technology stack that underpins mobile gaming.

The acquisition, announced on 22 April 2026, extends Tamatem's footprint into the interactive advertising space for the first time and coincides with a capital injection from new backers Next Ventures and Square Enix, together with a top-up from existing investor Krafton, that takes the company's total funding past the $25 million mark. Financial terms of the Playable Factory transaction were not disclosed.

For Tamatem, the deal is the most consequential structural shift in the publisher's twelve-year history. It transforms a company best known for localising Arabic-language mobile games into a vertically integrated platform that now spans content, distribution, payments, advertising technology and artificial intelligence tooling. Commenting on the acquisition, Hussam Hammo, CEO of Tamatem, said: "This is a defining moment in Tamatem's journey. With Playable Factory, we are bringing one of the most advanced interactive advertising technologies in the world into our platform, enabling us to integrate content, distribution, payments, and now global ad tech to build a fully unified gaming ecosystem, with Abu Dhabi as our strategic base for international growth."

Founded in Istanbul in 2018, Playable Factory has developed more than 90,000 interactive ads and built a platform used by top gaming companies worldwide to run playable advertising campaigns, the format that allows users to trial a game directly inside an ad before downloading it. The technology is widely credited in the industry with delivering materially higher install conversion rates and stronger retention than traditional video or static creatives, which is why it has become a central acquisition channel for mobile game publishers facing rising user acquisition costs and tightening ad-tracking rules across major platforms.

Berat Oğuz, founder and CEO of Playable Factory, commented on the combination: "Playable Factory has built a trusted platform serving leading gaming companies across Europe and the United States. Joining Tamatem allows us to scale this technology globally while continuing to deliver high-performance solutions to our partners."

A post-privacy advertising economy

The economics of mobile gaming are being reshaped by two simultaneous forces, the erosion of deterministic ad targeting following privacy changes on iOS and Android, and the accelerating use of generative AI to produce advertising creatives and game content at scale. Apple's App Tracking Transparency policy, introduced in 2021, and Google's subsequent Privacy Sandbox rollout on Android have dismantled the identifier-based targeting that underpinned a decade of mobile user acquisition. Mobile gaming has responded by shifting budget toward formats that carry their own performance signal, and playable ads sit at the top of that list.

By letting users interact with a game before they install it, playable creatives act as a pre-install qualification layer. Advertisers see who engages, how long they play, and what mechanics hold attention, data that was previously only available post-install through deterministic tracking. The format consistently delivers higher install-to-paying-user conversion rates than video and rewarded video, which is why the category has grown into one of the few bright spots in a mobile ad-tech market otherwise compressed by privacy headwinds.

Owning the technology in-house gives Tamatem both a margin advantage on its own user acquisition and a new revenue line from third-party developers, particularly global studios trying to enter the Arabic-speaking market. It also reduces a structural cost. Mobile publishers typically spend between a third and half of their gross revenue on user acquisition, and ad creative production is one of the fastest-growing line items within that spend. Bringing a 90,000-ad production pipeline in-house, and layering generative AI on top of it, compresses that cost curve.

Why MENA gaming is commanding capital

The Middle East and North Africa has become one of the fastest-growing gaming territories globally, accounting for more than 450 million potential gamers, driven by a young, mobile-first demographic with some of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world. Saudi Arabia and the UAE together generate among the highest average revenue per paying user in mobile gaming, outpacing several mature Western markets. Regional spend on mobile games has grown at double-digit annual rates for the past five years, and the user base continues to expand as Arabic-language content catches up with player demand.

That localisation edge is central to Tamatem's commercial pitch. Since its founding in 2013, the company has published more than 70 localised titles, generated over 300 million downloads and built an audience of more than three million monthly active users. Its infrastructure arm, Tamatem Plus, integrates over 45 local payment methods through a single API, giving hundreds of game developers and app operators a route to monetise users across a region where card penetration remains uneven and cash-on-delivery, telco billing and local wallets still carry significant share. Folding Playable Factory into that stack means global developers can now plug into a single MENA partner for localised content, payments and interactive user acquisition rather than stitching together three vendors.

Abu Dhabi's gaming bet

The deal also cements Abu Dhabi's growing role as a base for gaming and digital entertainment companies. Tamatem relocated its headquarters to the emirate in 2024 under a strategic partnership with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, part of a wider push by ADIO to build out a gaming ecosystem spanning publishing, development studios, esports, monetisation infrastructure, AI tooling and specialist talent pipelines.

Hasan Al Hashmi, Head of the Media, Entertainment, Gaming and Sports Sectors at ADIO, pointed to the acquisition as evidence of the emirate's thesis playing out: "Abu Dhabi is focused on establishing itself as one of the world's most competitive and forward-looking hubs for gaming companies, publishers and technology innovators. The growth of companies like Tamatem reflects the strength of our ecosystem and our ability to support ambitious, high-growth businesses as they scale regionally and globally. By enabling access to capital, talent and advanced infrastructure, we are creating the conditions for gaming companies to innovate and lead from Abu Dhabi."

A competitive contrast is sharpening across the Gulf's gaming hubs. Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games Group has pursued a capital-intensive model, acquiring studios and esports properties outright and backing global publishers with multibillion-dollar cheques as part of the kingdom's broader diversification agenda. Abu Dhabi, by contrast, has leaned toward building commercial infrastructure and attracting operating companies rather than taking financial stakes. Tamatem's trajectory, from Amman-founded Arabic publisher to Abu Dhabi-headquartered platform with an Istanbul-based ad tech arm and global ambitions, reads as a validation of the infrastructure-led approach.

The AI pivot

With this acquisition, Tamatem enters a new phase as an AI-first gaming platform. The company is actively investing in artificial intelligence across its operations, from accelerating game development to producing and optimising ads at scale, and enabling more personalised and interactive player experiences. The long-term vision is to leverage AI to transform how games are developed, marketed and experienced, enabling faster production cycles, smarter growth and new gameplay models.

That positioning reflects where the wider industry is heading. Large publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Krafton have publicly committed to AI-assisted production pipelines, and the cost structure of mobile game development is being rewritten in real time. Genres that once required eighteen-month development cycles are being prototyped in weeks. For a publisher operating in a language and cultural market that has historically been underserved by global engines and tooling, AI offers a rare shot at narrowing the production gap with Western and East Asian competitors, rather than widening it.

An investor base built for global scale

The addition of Square Enix to the cap table carries particular weight. The Japanese publisher, home to franchises including Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, has been selectively backing regional platforms that can distribute and monetise its intellectual property in markets where it lacks direct operational depth. Next Ventures, a gaming-focused investment firm, and Krafton, the South Korean publisher behind PUBG, round out an investor group that positions Tamatem less as a regional champion and more as a node in a global gaming network.

The $25 million-plus total raised remains modest by the standards of Western gaming exits, but the composition of the syndicate matters more than the headline number. A publisher with Square Enix, Krafton and Next Ventures on its cap table gains access to content licensing conversations, live operations expertise and distribution partnerships that pure financial capital cannot buy.

Tamatem now operates six offices across Amman, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Istanbul and Baghdad, with a workforce of 180. Expansion beyond MENA into global markets is explicit in the company's stated strategy, combining culturally specific content, payments infrastructure, advertising technology and AI into what it describes as a globally competitive gaming platform originating from the region.

Whether that ambition translates into scale outside MENA will depend on how cleanly Playable Factory's technology integrates into Tamatem's existing publishing and payments stack, and how quickly the combined company can monetise third-party demand from global developers. What is no longer in question is that Tamatem is exiting the pure-play regional publisher category, and that Abu Dhabi intends to be the address from which it does so.