Amman-based mobile games publisher Tamatem has fully acquired Playable Factory, the Istanbul-founded interactive advertising platform that has generated more than 30 billion ad impressions and produced over 90,000 playable ads for gaming companies globally.
The acquisition was announced alongside a $10 million funding round led by Next Ventures, with Square Enix, the Japanese publisher behind Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, and South Korea's Krafton, the company behind PUBG, joining as new and returning strategic investors respectively. Total funding raised by Tamatem now exceeds $25 million.
Founded in 2013 by Hussam Hammo, a Jordanian entrepreneur who was the first Arab to go through 500 Startups in Silicon Valley after his previous gaming studio Wizards Productions collapsed in 2012, Tamatem has built the largest Arabic mobile games publishing operation in the region, with over 70 localised titles, 300 million downloads and more than 3 million monthly active users. Approximately 70% of its user base is in Saudi Arabia.
The company doesn’t build games from scratch but partners with developers internationally to localise titles for Arabic-speaking audiences, translating language, adapting cultural references and managing distribution and monetisation through its own infrastructure, including Tamatem Plus, a payments network integrating over 45 local payment methods into a single API.
The Playable Factory acquisition adds user acquisition technology to that stack. Playable ads, which let users trial a game before downloading it, deliver up to 8x higher install conversion rates and 40% stronger retention than static ad formats, according to the company.
Playable Factory, founded in Istanbul in 2018 by Berat Oguz, received a strategic investment from Ludus Ventures in 2025 and was already serving major gaming companies across Europe and the US before the Tamatem deal.
The acquisition integrates ad tech into what was previously a content, distribution and payments business, moving Tamatem toward controlling the full stack from game localisation through to player acquisition and monetisation.
Krafton first invested in Tamatem in its $11 million Series B in December 2021, marking the PUBG maker's first investment in MENA, alongside VentureSouq and Endeavor Catalyst. That round valued Tamatem at approximately $80 million. Krafton has now increased its commitment in this round, and Square Enix's arrival adds a second major global games publisher to the cap table. Both are companies with existing or stated interest in MENA as a growth market for mobile gaming. Wamda Capital, which led Tamatem's $2.5 million Series A in 2018 alongside Raed Ventures and Discovery Nusantara Capital, remains a shareholder.
Tamatem now operates across six offices in Amman, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Istanbul and Baghdad with 180 employees. The company says it plans to expand beyond MENA into new markets, using the combination of content, payments infrastructure, ad tech and AI to position itself as a global gaming platform originating from the region rather than a regional publisher dependent on licensing content from elsewhere.
