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Drawing on Aream & Co.’s financial advisory experience and InvestGame’s data intelligence, the Q2 2026 Gaming Market Update breaks down where deals closed, capital concentrated, and platform growth persisted in the global gaming market.
Here’s what defined Q2 2026:
- M&A kept climbing, the busiest quarter since 2022: 54 transactions worth $2.3B, with the closing of Scopely’s ~$1B Loom Games deal and the announced ~$0.6B sale of Wemade founder’s stake leading the way. Mid-market content dealmaking stayed strong, with $100M+ acquisitions at levels not seen since the pandemic boom.
- Public offerings broadened out: $1.7B raised across 25 deals, a 67% YoY jump in deal count, headlined by Liftoff’s ~$0.5B IPO and PlaySimple’s ~$0.35B listing plan. Public gaming equities nonetheless kept sliding, posting year-to-date declines across the board even on reasonably solid reported results.
- Private investment stole the quarter: $3.1B deployed across 108 deals, roughly 6x YoY and the biggest quarterly haul in years. AppsFlyer’s ~$1B Series E led the way, alongside AI-native mega-rounds from General Intuition, Odyssey, and Decart. Gaming-adjacent technology took the largest share of both public and private capital.
- PC kept growing while consoles stayed flat: Steam delivered $5.5B in quarterly revenue and 42.4M peak concurrent users, just under Q1’s all-time highs, on a mix of franchise sequels and fresh IP. Console revenue barely moved at $14.5B (+3% YoY) as Switch 2 (+90% YoY) more than made up for declines at PlayStation and Xbox.
- Mobile stayed the laggard: IAP spend slipped 4% YoY to $19.4B, with downloads down 12% YoY to multi-year lows, as publishers continued to improve monetization efficiency.
For a comprehensive breakdown of deal flow, platform performance, and capital-market trends, access the Aream & Co. Q2 2026 Gaming Update below.
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