Saudi Arabia's $6 Billion Mobile Legends Deal Was Announced in March — Here's Why Nobody Can Confirm It's Actually Closed

Saudi Arabia's $6 Billion Mobile Legends Deal Was Announced in March. Six Months On, Nobody Will Confirm It's Actually Closed

If you only read the headlines, you'd think Savvy Games Group already owns Moonton, the Shanghai-based studio behind Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. Several gaming-trade outlets reported the $6 billion acquisition as "completed" within days of it being announced back in March. The trouble is, according to the deal's own paperwork, it wasn't — and more than half a year later, there's still no clear, on-the-record confirmation that it has closed.

What's actually confirmed

On March 20, 2026, Bloomberg reported that ByteDance — TikTok's Chinese parent company — had agreed to sell Moonton Technology, the publisher of one of the world's biggest mobile esports titles, to Savvy Games Group for roughly $6 billion. Savvy, a gaming investment vehicle owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), confirmed the agreement the following day.

Law firm Skadden, which advised ByteDance on the transaction, described it as a "definitive agreement" — standard legal language for a signed contract, not a completed sale. According to Skadden's own summary and several deal trackers including InvestGame, the sale was explicitly subject to "customary closing conditions, including certain regulatory approvals," with multiple outlets at the time pointing to a second- or third-quarter 2026 close.

That's the part that matters: signing a definitive agreement and closing a deal are two different legal milestones, and the gap between them is exactly where this story got muddled.

Where the confusion crept in

Within days of the March announcement, at least one outlet ran a headline stating the acquisition had been "completed," and that framing propagated across aggregators and smaller gaming-business sites — even though the underlying reporting, including Savvy's own statements, described the deal as signed rather than closed. It's a familiar pattern in M&A coverage: a press release confirming an agreement gets reported as if the transaction has already settled, and the correction never quite catches up with the original headline.

As of this writing, TechFinder could not locate a formal, dated closing announcement from either Savvy Games Group or ByteDance confirming the Moonton sale has cleared regulatory review. Given the deal's structure — a Chinese-developed mobile game studio with a global user base being sold to a Saudi state-backed buyer — a longer regulatory runway, including potential data-governance review in the markets where Mobile Legends operates most heavily, would not be surprising. None of that has been publicly flagged as a blocker, but it hasn't been publicly cleared either.

Why it matters beyond the spreadsheet

Moonton isn't a small studio. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is one of the dominant mobile esports titles across Southeast Asia and the Gulf region, with Savvy's own ESL FACEIT Group already running top-tier MLBB tournaments, including the MLBB World Championship (M-Series) and the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League. If the Moonton acquisition closes as reported, Savvy would control both the publisher of the game and a major chunk of its competitive infrastructure — publisher and tournament operator under one Saudi-owned roof.

That consolidation sits inside a much bigger pattern. PIF-backed entities — Savvy Games Group, ESL FACEIT Group, and mobile publisher Scopely — are widely reported (per industry analysis site Naavik) to represent tens of billions of dollars in gaming and esports holdings accumulated over the past few years, alongside large minority stakes in Nintendo, Activision Blizzard-era Microsoft, Capcom, and others acquired earlier in PIF's gaming push. Whether or not the Moonton deal has formally closed, it's one more data point in Saudi Arabia's broader strategy of buying up both the games people play competitively and the leagues they play them in.

The regional angle

For Gulf readers specifically, this is also a competitive-gaming story close to home. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang has a substantial amateur and semi-pro scene across the GCC, and ESL FACEIT Group — Savvy's existing esports arm — already runs regional qualifiers feeding into global MLBB tournaments. A fully-closed Moonton deal would mean the game's publisher, its biggest tournament organizer, and a state-linked investment fund with deep UAE and wider-Gulf esports interests would all sit under the same ownership structure, with implications for how regional MLBB competitions are scheduled, funded, and broadcast going forward.

What to watch

Until Savvy Games Group or ByteDance issues an unambiguous closing statement, treat "Savvy owns Moonton" as agreed-but-unconfirmed rather than done. Readers should watch for an official completion announcement from either party, any regulatory filings referencing the transaction's closing date, and whether Moonton's leadership — reportedly set to stay in place post-acquisition — makes any public statement about operating as a Savvy subsidiary. TechFinder will update this story once that confirmation, one way or the other, actually surfaces.