Hey Friends, Greetings from Bangalore 💗 and Happy New Year 🥳

Here’s your curated look at the last two weeks’ top deals in gaming, Top Funding & M&A Headlines.

Funding & Investments
1. NCSoft expands into casual mobile with a $104M stake deal, signalling how serious core publishers are about the “snackable” end of the market.
2. GameByte raises $1M to push text-to-playable creation tools, leaning into AI-assisted prototyping and UGC.
3. Nitro Games lands a €1.6M development agreement, extending its runway to ship and scale new titles.
4. e2vc closes €100M Fund III for early-stage founders, adding fresh dry powder for seed/pre-seed game and tool teams.
5. Moku launches a $50K creator rewards program (12-week runway) to incentivise builders on its platform.

M&A & Strategic Moves
6. GOG gets acquired by CD PROJEKT co-founder Michał Kiciński with a clear signal that the DRM-free vision stays.
7. Little Umbrella acquires Discord-native Karaoke Battle, doubling down on community-first, social-graph gameplay.
8. Stash acquires Galleon, strengthening its DTC / webshop infrastructure stack for game commerce.
9. Hypixel buys Hytale back from Riot, reclaiming creative control over one of the most anticipated sandbox RPGs.
10. Discord reportedly files confidentially for a US IPO, setting up a major liquidity event for one of the games’ core infrastructure platforms.

Studios & Ecosystem Moves
11. Ex-Boss Fight team launches Sunwise Games, bringing veteran F2P/live-ops experience into a new label.
12. Ex-Zynga talent forms Sorrel Games in Istanbul, a hybrid-casual studio targeting the post-hypercasual opportunity.
13. NEOM Level Up selects 5 studios (Aiqona, Fourcast, Makera, OFF BOX, Phys) for funding and support as part of its regional games ecosystem push.

Platform Shifts Worth Watching
14. Roblox rolls out facial age estimation to limit minor–adult interactions, signalling the next wave of safety & identity tech.
15. Google Play (US) now allows alternative payment methods, increasing pressure on store take rates and billing control.
16. Unity × Epic signal more “interoperable tooling” momentum, hinting at a future where engines compete but pipelines need to talk to each other.
17. A Horizon MMO is real – targeting mobile + PC, not PlayStation-first, underlining Sony’s shift toward cross-platform reach.

Stay ahead. Curated weekly at iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

Business of Games

$200M+ gaming industry valuations & deals…