Inside Türkiye’s fast-rising gaming hub
This week we travelled to Istanbul for the Mobidictum Conference to get an up close look at Türkiye’s bustling games hub.
There’s a buzz and even an arrogance in the industry. Founders are confident about their chances of success and getting the backing - through investment and government support - to achieve it.
And who can blame them? The sector has been inspired by giants like Toon Blast developer Peak, Merge Dragons studio Gram Games, hypercasual-turned-hybridcasual publisher Rollic and the king of match-3: Royal Match maker Dream Games. Then there’s the new wave of studios (more on that shortly) firing themselves up the charts and into the hands of millions of players around the world.
We’ve rounded up a few key takeaways from Mobidictum and our time in Türkiye below.
Don’t forget, we recently published a region report on Türkiye, in partnership with Xsolla, diving into the state of play in the industry - with commentary from Arcadia Gaming Partners MD Akin Babayigit, Zynga Türkiye GM Bugra Koc, the head of trade body TOGED’s advisory board Tuğbek Ölek, and more.
We’ve put together a list of the Top 30 Türkiye Game Makers for 2026, too. But as you’ll see, new studios continue to make waves in the sector.
1) ‘Elite graduates’ want a piece of the mobile gaming pie
For all the challenges the mobile games market faces - and let there be no mistake, studios continue to face funding hardships, ever-rising UA costs and a market that’s not growing as fast as it once was - Türkiye’s games market seems to be defying industry trends. Take these fund raises as an example:
- Grand Games secured $70m in a Series B round.
- Circle Games took $25m in a Series A.
- Talemonster Games raised $30m in its Series A.
- Surge Games has garnered $3 million in pre-seed funding.
- Rotatelab picked up seed investment from Arcadia Gaming Partners and Laton Ventures.
- Bold Games raised $6m.
A lot of credit for today’s sector goes to the likes of Peak and Gram, with alums setting up new success stories like Dream. These billion-dollar successes are inspiring an entire generation of not just talented alumni, but the top graduates coming out of university looking to found a new business. One studio executive said ‘elite graduates’ were setting up their own game studios, rather than other businesses.
Arcadia Gaming Partners MD Akin Babayigit also pointed out Türkiye’s best graduates are looking to build mobile games. Laton Ventures founding partner Görkem Türk joked: “In school days, gaming was not the sexiest thing to do,” but now each and every conversation with founders has them stating how passionate they’ve always been about the sector.”
2) Overnight success stories years in the making
It’s quite a common line throughout the industry’s history: an overnight success story that’s actually years in the making. Famously, Finnish studio Rovio had 51 failed games before the company made Angry Birds, propelling it to global stardom (check out our podcast episode on the rise of Angry Birds here).
It’s the same for studios in Türkiye. Loom Games’ rise caught the headlines for its rapid rise. The studio has become a poster child for the country’s impressive startup scene. Pixel Flow quickly scaled, the team scored investment from Arcadia Gaming Partners and, capping off a whirlwind few months, gaming giant Scopely acquired a majority stake in the studio valuing it in excess of $1 billion. We interviewed Loom Games CEO Kübra Gündoğan about that deal here.
But much of that team had actually been making games together for years. Mobidictum’s CEO Batuhan Avucan pointed out that the founders had previously worked on Rollic’s hit game Twisted Tangle.
“They already understood prototyping, soft launches, rapid iteration and performance optimisation,” said Avucan. “They were not experimenting blindly. They were operating within a system. Making one hit game might involve luck. Making multiple hit games requires a process.”
And perhaps to the previous point - these were not just alums of Türkiye’s most famous studios, they entered the games industry with their own startup.
During a session at the conference, Cypher Games CEO and co-founder Anil Simsek said his studio took four years to build. The studio launched Royal Smash just a few months ago and is now making millions of dollars per month. That comes a year after the studio secured $30 million in Series A funding.
3) Aggressive scaling
Something that’s been highlighted in many chats and conference talks I’ve attended over the years is just how good Chinese publishers are at user acquisition. The top companies have substantial UA marketing funds and big teams to build creatives.
Here’s what I previously wrote from my takeaways at RovioCon 2025: “Chinese publishers are dominating the mobile games industry. As Katkoff noted in his session, Chinese companies have big team sizes, build monetisation at the core of their games right off the bat - as higher user value can lead to higher UA budgets - and have a bigger home market, among other advantages.
“With large teams - Katkoff said 1,000 was a relatively average team size in China - big budgets and substantial expertise, Chinese publishers have grown into global market leaders.
“... One industry expert PocketGamer.biz spoke with during the event aired their concerns over how Western developers can compete with their Chinese counterparts, particularly given their expertise in both design and marketing. These companies will continue to grow and could kill the Western games industry over the next few years, they suggested.”
It seems aggressive scaling to achieve rapid market share has become an important part of achieving success in mobile - and some of Türkiye’s studios are adhering to that notion.
Cypher Games’ Simsek claimed the studio - which had raised $30m at the end of 2025 - spent significant sums (10s of millions) on marketing in just a few months. Its title Royal Smash is similar to Smash Fest, built by rival Türkiye studio Flow Games. AppMagic estimates show the former has generated 16.7m to date, while the latter has accrued more than 24m installs, both in a similar timeframe.
At present, while Smash Fest is estimated to have accumulated more revenue from IAPs than Royal Smash, Cypher’s game is currently growing faster for player spending. AppMagic does not provide estimates for ad revenue.
I asked Babayigit at Pocket Gamer Connects London this year whether developers can afford to scale slowly and sustainably in such a competitive market, or should they look to get UA capital as fast as possible.
“If we had this chat three years ago, I would say probably one or two million is definitely not enough to scale. So the milestones in my mind are, you raise the pre-seed to build something and then hopefully reach some promising KPIs. And then you probably want to raise again because we are in a performance marketing-driven industry in mobile, so you need money to scale.”
This notion is likely why Leus - another Türkiye firm! - has just launched its Cohort Publishing platform for mobile games, aimed at enabling publishers to acquire users prior to generating revenue that would likely end up being reinvested later into marketing campaigns.
In fact, that’s another element of the country’s games industry - it has homegrown backers investing in the sector to help it grow, such as from Arcadia Gaming Partners, e2vc, Laton Ventures, Ludus Ventures, Drilo Ventures and others. Another VC, Firstpoint VC, launched a €50m fund this year, highlighting Türkiye success specifically.
4) Fast-moving industry
In our list of the Top 30 Türkiye Game Makers for 2026, published in association with Xsolla, we noted that the guide reflected just a snapshot of what’s really going on in the country right now - such as the fast-evolving nature of the hub.
At the Mobidictum conference, there was no shortage of startups and recently flush studios that have found new success. Since we published that in early August - what has the growth been like since?
I’ve already mentioned how Smash Fest and Royal Smash grew quickly, competing in the same category.
Elsewhere, per AppMagic data:
- Tribom Games has quickly scaled Jigsaw Block Sort this year, generating an estimated $10m+ from player spending. Monthly IAP revenue for the company rose 955% from January to September.
- Rotateland has a breakout success - but years in the making - with Cube Land, scoring $17m from player spending since its launch this year. September was its best month yet.
- Spyke Games, already high on our Top 30 list, looks to have found a brand new hit in Yarn Loop, generating an estimated $56.5m from player spending, largely captured in 2026.
- Grand Games continues to fly high thanks to titles like Magic Sort, Block Out and Car Match - a repeat hitmaker.
- Circle Games has been busy scaling Sort Express each month this year to record revenue in September 2026.
And for good measure - so far this year the world’s top puzzle games by IAP revenue include:
1. Royal Match (Dream Games)
5. Royal Kingdom (Dream Games)
6. Toon Blast (Peak)
11. Pixel Flow (Loom Games)
12. Match Factory (Peak)
22. Magic Sort (Grand Games)
23. Color Block Jam (Rollic)
24. Toy Blast (Peak)
28. Match Villains (Good Job Games)
32. Yarn Loop (Spyke Games)
Narrow down to just the US market:
1. Royal Match (Dream Games)
4. Royal Kingdom (Dream Games)
5. Toon Blast (Peak)
6. Match Factory (Peak)
8. Pixel Flow (Loom Games)
15. Magic Sort (Grand Games)
19. Toy Blast (Peak)
22. Color Block Jam (Rollic)
25. Yarn Loop (Spyke Games)
30. Match Villains (Good Job Games)
There’s a growing dominance and scale coming out of Türkiye, particularly focused on the puzzle and hybridcasual categories. In the US, five of those titles are also in the top 20 overall highest grossing games for 2026.
I do want to stress, though, that ad revenue is not included here. It's an important and yet not very visible part of how Türkiye's developers operate their hybridcasual businesses.
5) Is there a bubble?
With all the investment flooding into Türkiye’s games industry, Avucan posed a question on stage - are we in a hype cycle? Turkish founders are expensive, he said, but for now, the success keeps coming.
“I think it’s both, I think yes we’re in a bubble,” said Babayigit .
“But every time someone says we’re in a bubble there’s another Loom Games, there’s something else that happens. I’ve been in this sector for 15 years and every single year they say ‘this year, that’s it, it’s a house of cards that’s going to come crumbling down’, and every year there's another counter.”
He added, however, that one problem he has is what's going to happen with all of these companies? "I think the mismatch is very real," he said, pointing to expectations versus reality - despite the success stories so far.