Raid: Shadow Legends developer Plarium has been acquired by Swedish entertainment conglomerate Modern Times Group, and the amount for which the studio was acquired may well surprise you.
According to a press release, MTG (that's Modern Times Group, of course, not Magic: The Gathering) acquired Plarium for a staggering $620 million, of which $20 million will be deferred to 2026.
That goes to show just how huge the mobile gaming business still is (although, of course, Raid: Shadow Legends is also available on PC). We're not quite in the realms of Take-Two's monumental Zynga acquisition or Microsoft's huge Activision Blizzard merger, but $620 million is not to be sniffed at.
The amount for which Plarium was acquired might sound like a lot, but as MTG points out, the studio "generated $613 million in revenues" between September 2023 and September 2024, so the purchase is worth roughly one year of Plarium's revenue.
The group says that Plarium's "tech and deep expertise in live-ops, marketing and monetization" will benefit its "performance over the long term", and that the acquisition will "substantially improve MTG's already strong cash flow generation".
If you're only familiar with Raid: Shadow Legends from interstitial ads and sponsorship deals, then you may not know just how big a deal it is, but suffice it to say that the game does pretty well for itself financially.
Back in July 2022, it was revealed that Raid: Shadow Legends had passed $1 billion in overall revenue, and while that doesn't quite put it on the level of a mega-hit like Tencent's Honor of Kings, those are certainly big-league numbers.
Although Plarium is mainly known for Raid: Shadow Legends, the company does have other games as well, including free-to-play PvP shooter Mech Arena and casual puzzler Merge Gardens, among others.
We'll have to wait and see what MTG's acquisition of Plarium yields, but it's unlikely to change the latter's business practices in any meaningful way. Stay tuned for more.
