InvestGame team is proud to share with you our Global Gaming Deals Activity Report Q1-Q3’22.
Please submit your email to get the Report in your inbox and read the short summary below.
Q3’22 has proven to continue the somewhat lagging results of the previous quarter, further exacerbating the gaming market cooling conditions: the current lumpish macroeconomic situation, post-pandemic user engagement changes, post-IDFA pressure, increased regulatory scrutiny, release dates shifts, supply chain issues, and other factors.
As a result, this quarter has experienced a weakening across all investment activity types.
— In Q1–Q3’22, we have registered 626 closed deals with the overall deal value of $51.4B, or $124.5B, including 10 more announced but not yet closed deals including Microsoft ATVI deal.
— Even though $124.5B is almost 2x bigger than $62.4B (Q1–Q3’21 closed + announced cumulative deal value), without the Activision Blizzard potential acquisition the actual value is lower: $55.5B. The same is true for closed deals, with $51.4B vs. $58.8B across 709 deals in Q1–Q3’21. If the final quarter of 2022 turns out to be as heavily impacted as the third one, we may safely say that 2022 will not be as record-breaking as 2021 was.
— Following the contradictory results of the M&A activity in H1’22, the trend continues in Q3’22. From the deal value perspective, there is a 16% growth to $6.7B in Q3’22 (compared to $5.8B in Q3’21). Meanwhile, the overall deal count shows a tremendous decline (–31%).
— It seems like the soured macroeconomic situation has finally caught up with Private Investments as well: the last quarter showed the weakest result since Q4’20. 111 deals have presented the total disclosed value of $1.4B, indicating a sharp decline from Q2’22 (–69% QoQ).
— Public Offerings reached its lowest point since 2020. On a YTD basis, the total deal value has shrunk ~5x times vs. 2021, and ~2x times vs. 2020; meanwhile, the deal count has declined 3.6x vs. 2021 and 3x vs. 2020, making 2022 the worst year for Public Offerings.
— While Blockchain gaming used to be the driving force of Early-stage investment activity, Q3’22 is the first quarter with negative growth metrics in the blockchain-related investments. The total number of deals continued to grow (up 2.8x YoY; 61 vs. 22), the total deal value was down –14% YoY ($932m vs $1.09B). This showcases continued but slightly waning investor interest in the potential future of uniquely enabled business models in blockchain games.
For the first time in our Report, we separated our VC Investors lists, dividing them by Web3 and traditional Gaming investments. Moreover, we added a map of all the closed control M&A transactions this year, and also expanded our data about the founders of the companies that took part in the closed deals in the context of gender diversity in 2021 and 2022.
We would love to thank our dear friends from Hiro Capital for supporting this Report, our colleagues from Naavik for helping us out with the Blockchain gaming analysis, and a special thank you to White Label PR agency for connecting us with top tier media outlets!
