What’s in the Reports
Digital Development Management maintains and continuously updates the only source of investment, acquisition, and merger data specific to the video game industry that has been gathered and rigorously tracked for over 16 years.
The longest running series of reports on investments and M&As in the video game industry, produced quarterly with a free Executive Summary as well as a paid option for the quarter’s transactions in PDF and Excel formats.
Download the Q3 2024 Executive Summary covering the gaming industry’s investments and M&As
Purchase the quarter’s transactions data (PDF and Excel)
Save by purchasing the most recent and the next three quarterly transaction bundles
Updated for October 2024, DDM is proud to release the Project & Studio Financing Snapshot, a unique overview that harnesses insights for two main methods of video game financing, project or studio, from our business development and investment services teams.
Overall, the industry has tightened its belt in a ‘COVID investment spree’ hangover. Project financing remains low, studio investments emphasize early-stage funding, and acquisitions focus less on content and more on increasing bandwidth. Our outlook for both is slight warming as companies across the industry prepare their budgets and strategies for 2025.
A retrospective look at the 2023 Console/PC segment:
Console/PC investments and M&As totaled $69.5B across 200 transactions (+612% in value and -25% in volume compared to 2022’s $9.7B across 267 transactions), marking the largest year for the Console/PC segment and was 2x larger than the last 5 years combined (2018-2022) due to Microsoft’s colossal $68.7B acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Without the acquisition, the Console/PC segment showed signs of trouble as it would have totaled $769.2M across 199 transactions (-92% in value and -25% in volume compared to 2022’s $9.7B across 267 transactions); this is the second consecutive year of declined value and volume and would have been the lowest yearly value across the past six years.
Q1 2024 developer investments totaled $2.0B across 127 investments (+308% in value and +43% in volume compared to Q4 2023’s $485.7M across 89 investments).
This 4x in value is due to Disney’s $1.5B investment in Epic Games (76% of the quarter’s value) making developer investments near 2023’s yearly developer total all within the first quarter.
Because of 2024’s strong start, 2024 will surpass 2023’s developer investments which reached $2.3B across 444 investments, breaking a four-year decline of investment value dating back to 2021’s peak of $33.3B across 552 investments.
2023 mobile investments totaled $1.1B across 179 investments (-69% in value and -25% in volume compared to 2022’s $3.5B across 238 investments).
This drastic decline in value continues a three-year decline of value and volume since mobile games investment peak of $8.3B across 233 investments back in 2021 when Applovin and Playtika both went public with a combined value of $3.9B and market capitalization of $39.7B.
Digital Development Management maintains and continuously updates the only source of investment, acquisition, and merger data specific to the video game industry that has been gathered and rigorously tracked for over 16 years.
Each Quarterly Transaction Bundle includes the quarter’s comprehensive listing of each segment’s investment/M&A transactions.