Inside Scopely's rise to a global mobile games giant

• Scopely’s growth has been driven largely by how it thinks about games, moving from thinking about individual products to long-term live services that evolve.
• The company’s approach to scale combines tools and systems that are shared across its portfolio with autonomy for individual teams.

Mobile games giant Scopely enters its 15th year in a very different position from the small Los Angeles startup founded back in 2011. 

Today, the company operates across more than 30 countries with thousands of employees under its banner. Its portfolio spans major brands from Monopoly Go to Star Trek Fleet Command and Pokémon Go, reaching millions of players each year and amassing more than 150 billion hours played

The 15th-year milestone arrives after a busy time for the studio, during which major acquisitions and record-breaking performances have taken place.

Monopoly Go alone surpassed $6 billion in player spending across iOS and Android in record-setting time, reinforcing Scopely’s position as one of the top studios in the mobile games market. 

Speaking to PocketGamer.biz, chief operating officer Eunice Lee reflects on how the company evolved into operating what she describes as a global entertainment ecosystem. 

Operating games at scale

For Lee, the defining shift across Scopely’s history has not been just a technological one, but philosophical. 

“Over the past 15 years, the biggest transformation has been how we think about games,” she says. “We think of them not as products, but as long-term services that evolve alongside their communities.” 

That transition reshaped nearly every part of the business, with Lee stating that the shift fundamentally changed how the teams build, operate and invest in games.

“We really saw the importance of live operations, deeper social systems and rising expectations from players around consistency and quality,” Lee explains. "That pushed us to develop capabilities that allow games to operate successfully for many years, not just launch them successfully.”

Rather than treating a game's release as the finish line, Scopely began investing heavily in live infrastructure and shared expertise across teams. 

Lee explains that more recently the shift has been scaling from individual titles to a broader ecosystem and that teams, technology and shared learnings are brought together across the portfolio, so improvements in one game can benefit others. Lee notes how this “has been a key driver behind our growth to $15 billion in lifetime revenue".

Despite significant changes across the mobile market over the past decade and a half, Lee states that one principle has remained unchanged.

“What’s stayed constant is our focus on players. The landscape evolved constantly, but long-term growth still comes from delivering experiences people genuinely want to return to every day.”

The Monopoly Go phenomenon

Few games are able to showcase that better than Monopoly Go, which became one of the fastest-growing mobile titles ever following its initial 2023 launch after seven years in development. 

Since its launch, the game has continued to evolve and add new content and has set itself as a core driver of growth for the wider company. In 2026, Scopely expanded the game’s ecosystem further with the global rollout of a standalone Monopoly Go Chat app, which allows players to message friends directly through one-to-one or group conversations. 

Lee frames the title’s success as the result of operational discipline rather than a single breakthrough moment or feature. 

“From an operational perspective, it comes down to consistency and cadence,” she says. “The team delivers a continuous stream of new content, events and progression systems that give players reasons to come back daily.” 

She goes on to explain that Monopoly Go is a great example of what happens when you combine a globally loved IP with "deep social design and strong live operations".

That social layer has proven to be something that has also played a critical role in the game's success. 

“The game is designed around interacting with friends and family, and that creates emotional engagement that goes beyond mechanics alone,” Lee adds. “To sustain that over the long-term, we stay very close to player behaviour and sentiment.”

Lee explains how the team is constantly learning, refining and evolving the experience and how it’s not just about any single feature but instead it's about maintaining a “dynamic system that grows with the community”.

Long-term live ops

One aspect that sits heavily at the core of Scopely’s strategy across its entire catalogue is live operations.

“Live operations are one of Scopely’s core capabilities and we’ve invested in live operations as both a discipline and an infrastructure," Lee explains. “We’ve built shared tools, systems, and expertise that allow teams to operate at scale.”

Lee stresses, however, that “there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach” and that each team needs flexibility to design experiences that are right for their specific player needs. 

Operating games as live services also changes how publishers respond to competition and how they adapt to any market changes. 

“Because our games are live services, we’re able to respond in real time, whether that’s adjusting content, tuning systems, or introducing new features,” Lee notes. “The advantage of operating a portfolio is that we can also share learnings across teams, which helps us move faster and make better decisions over time.”

Leadership and acquisitions 

Scopely’s growth over the years has also seen recent expansion that has come through by way of acquisitions, most notably its $3.5 billion deal to acquire the games business of Niantic in 2025, bringing the likes of Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now into the company’s portfolio. 

Earlier deals also include the purchase of Stumble Guys' from the original developer, Kitka Games, in 2022. The game reached over 700 million downloads following its expansion onto consoles. In early 2026, Scopely also acquired a majority stake in Istanbul-based Loom Games, the studio behind Pixel Flow at over $1 billion.

This phase of expansion has unfolded around the context of a wider change following Scolpley's own acquisition by Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games Group in 2023 in a $4.9 billion deal.

As the company has scaled, Lee says that the internal operating model has had to evolve alongside it. 

“As we’ve grown, leadership has shifted from being highly centralised toward building systems and attracting exceptional talent,” she explains.

According to Lee, the real operational challenge of integration lies in preserving what makes teams successful while bringing them together.

“With any acquisition, the most important priority is protecting what makes the games and their communities special,” she says. “These are long-running live services with deeply engaged audiences.”

Lee explains that player continuity remains a guiding principle and that transitions need to be thoughtful and player-first. Scopely supports teams with the technology, operational expertise and investment while giving them the flexibility to continue their own visions. 

She also highlights mutual learning as a major benefit. 

“Niantic built incredibly strong, real-world communities,” she says. “Niantic’s strength in real-world connection at scale is something we’re excited to continue investing in and it aligns closely with how we think about the role of play in bringing people together”

Data, decision making and technological shifts

With such wide expansions comes the responsibility of managing an even more diverse portfolio, which requires balancing analytics with creative intuition across teams.

“We don’t see data and creativity as being in tension,” she says. “They serve different but complementary roles.” She goes on to explain how data provides clarity at scale. “It helps us understand what players are doing at scale. It gives us clarity on patterns, behaviours and where we can improve, but it doesn’t tell us what to build next.”

Lee goes on to explain how teams still drive innovation and that the most impactful ideas come from teams that understand their players and are willing to take thoughtful risks. 

“Data informs decisions, but creativity defines the experience,” she says.

Other technologies are also influencing day-to-day game development, with artificial intelligence altering workflows across the games industry and becoming more commonplace. For Lee, the significance of AI lies not in any single instance of it but rather in its potential role across the wider development pipeline. 

“AI is one of the most promising areas, particularly in how it can accelerate development and enhance the work we are already doing.”

She emphasises that this acceleration is not positioned as a replacement for creative work, but instead as a tool to support it.

“Great games are still fundamentally driven by human creativity. Our focus is on using AI to empower teams and make them more effective, rather than replacing the creative processes that define the player experience.”

Looking beyond 15 years

Reaching the 15-year milestone and $15 billion in lifetime revenue marks a significant moment for Scopely, but Lee looks at the achievement as a reflection of community, noting that “it’s really a testament to the players and communities who have chosen to spend time with our games over many years.”

However, Lee also notes that what stands out most from recent years is how much those expectations are growing. 

“The bar continues to rise,” she notes. “Players expect more consistency, deeper experiences and stronger communities, and that pushes us to keep improving.”

Looking ahead, Scopely's strategy remains consistent. To focus on investing in long-term experiences that bring people together. Lee notes that means "expanding our portfolio, supporting our teams and exploring technologies that enhance how we deliver for players".

Her closing remarks are that the studio sees a lot of opportunity ahead, but the approach remains the same. “To stay close to players, think long-term and keep raising the standard for what live service games can be.”

Scopely was recently ranked number one in our own Top 30 US Game Makers list, reflecting its influence and growth across the global games industry.

Scopely will be speaking at Pocket Gamer Connects Barcelona on June 15th and 16th.