RIYADH: PIF-backed Savvy Games Group has partnered with gaming service provider Side to open a physical studio in Riyadh later this year to further support Saudi Arabia’s growing gaming ecosystem. 
 
The collaboration was cemented at a signing event earlier on Thursday at Side’s London studio. 
 
Nika Nour, head of global business development at Savvy Games Group, told Arab News: “There is no better partner than people like Side who have actually opened offices in other regions of the world, not just in Western countries like Europe or North America. 
 
“They have the experiences and the tools to actually increase services, to train up local talent, and enter communities and understand cultural nuances to forge partnerships, not just for the short term, but beyond 2030, and that’s why we’re very excited about this strategic initiative.” 
 
This is a step in expanding Side’s global footprint to 20 studios across 14 countries, providing services that range from co-development, player support, quality assurance (QA), localization QA, and audio. Their work in Saudi Arabia will be a tailored approach to the country’s needs, initially by offering co-dev, localization and local audio recording services. 
 
Jacob Madsen, London studio head and VP of EMEA at Side, told Arab News: “From a company point of view, we’re always looking to expand into new markets. We’re always looking to try and have a diverse workforce, so that was also something that was really interesting to me. Over the four months, we’ve been kind of developing a relationship between Side and Savvy.” 
 
Savvy prides itself on its three pillars as a holdings entity at PIF: Investments in MMA games, efforts on e-sports, as noted regionally with the Esports World Cup, and most importantly, moving forward and progressing on Saudi’s national Vision 2030 initiative of gaming ecosystem development. 
 
The studio will also aim to provide youth training programs and strengthen local institutions, including collaboration with local partners such as Full Sail University, to nurture homegrown talent in co-development, localization and QA.
 
“What we tend to do when we open up a studio is very much work with the local population,” Madsen explained. “We try to bring in as few seniors or employees of other studios and hire the men and women of the country that we’re in. We are talking to Savvy about how we can connect to any existing university or training programs, whether we can bring down some of our experts — but we will also very much be training the people that we hire for the services that we’ll be providing.”
 
Savvy Academy, the company’s flagship initiative, focuses on incubation, acceleration and training with university relationships. They have also been collaborating with the International Game Developers Association’s Riyadh chapter, which has a talent pool of more than 200 individuals in Jeddah, Dammam and Riyadh.
 
“We have great relationships with universities that we plan on imploring, working with, to bring these experts not only to the classrooms, but also figure out how we get them from graduation into professional careers,” Nour said. 
 
The studio is set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2025.