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Global gaming market sets its eye to Türkiye At a time when global foreign investments decreased significantly due to the epidemic, the sale of Turkish game firm Peak Games to Zynga with 1.8 billion dollars was the most talked about transaction by international investment markets.
THE TURKISH game development industry has reached millions of gamers around the world with games that have peaked in the international arena in recent years. Global firms are starting to see the growth of the gaming industry that has intensified as well as domestic firms in Türkiye. The young population of the country is considered as an opportunity for the game industry. The game industry is said to be about 32 million gamers from Türkiye. On the other hand, domestic companies are also very ambitious in the market, which has an annual export volume of 160 billion dollars. Turkish game firm Peak Games transferred the company's shares to US game developer Zynga for 1.8 billion dollars last month, attracting the attention of international investors. Because of the new investments that had a serious decline due to the pandemic, the high level of the sale was remarkable. The sale of Peak, being one of the largest acquisitions in Türkiye, created the first “unicorn” of Türkiye. Peak, whose partnership structure has changed only with the agreement, 22
The sale of Peak created Türkiye’s first unicorn as well as being one of the largest acquisitions in Türkiye
will continue its activities under its own brand without any change in its team and management and will continue to remain as a Turkish company. With a market value of around 136 billion dollars, the number of users worldwide has exceeded two billion in the game industry, which outperformed the global film industry. The number of users in Türkiye is around 32 million and 150 thousand gaming computers are sold in Türkiye. This figure accounts for about 15 percent of the computers sold in total. There is great interest in domestic games such as "Zula", "The Last One" and "Istanbul". Zula, except Türkiye, is palyed in Brazil Europe, Iran, Russia and
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Latin America meet with players via local broadcasters and reaches 25 million people. According to Game Developers' Association of Türkiye (TOGED) data; the export figure of the sector, which was 400 million dollars in 2015, reached 500 million dollars in 2016, 700 million dollars in 2017 and 1 billion 50 million dollars in 2018. 2019 export figures have not been officially announced, but it has exceeded the figures of 2018. By the end of this year, the export figure is expected to reach 1.5 billion dollars. The sector, which aims to export 10 billion dollars, can get more shares from the global game market. "TÜRKIYE HAS GREAT STRENGTH IN GLOBAL COMPETITION" One of the leading three brands in Türkiye and most well-known games from computer brand Monster Notebooks CEO Ilhan Yilmaz, Turkish companies are quite active in the global market and added, "Especially in the last five years, we see a great potential to be released. Türkiye has great power that can stand out in the global competition in
