Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is the most downloaded MOBA in history, with over 1.5 billion installs and more than 110 million monthly active players as of 2025. It’s also, as of early 2026, in the middle of one of the most significant ownership transitions in mobile gaming — one that most of its players haven’t thought about at all.
ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, acquired Moonton — the studio behind MLBB — in 2021 for $4 billion, outbidding Tencent in what was a genuinely competitive process. The logic at the time was that ByteDance could leverage its advertising infrastructure and distribution reach to accelerate Mobile Legends globally. By 2023, ByteDance had changed its mind. The company quietly put Moonton up for sale, signaling dissatisfaction with the studio’s revenue performance relative to ByteDance’s broader gaming ambitions.
By February 2026, Reuters was reporting that a preliminary agreement had been reached between ByteDance and Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group at a valuation of $6 to $7 billion. Savvy Games Group is the gaming investment arm of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — the same sovereign wealth fund behind the country’s aggressive push into esports, professional sports ownership, and entertainment infrastructure. It already holds significant stakes in ESL Gaming and FACEIT, and has been systematically acquiring positions across the global gaming industry.
For Mobile Legends players, the ownership change raises questions that parallel what Clash of Clans players are dealing with in the Tencent-Supercell situation. ByteDance has been a relatively passive owner of Moonton — the studio has continued developing MLBB largely on its own terms. Savvy Games Group’s acquisition thesis tends to be more active, with the fund publicly stating ambitions to build Saudi Arabia into a global gaming hub.
Ownership uncertainty of this kind has a well-documented pattern: offloading profiles they’d spent years on rather than waiting to see how a $7 billion acquisition reshapes the game’s priorities is exactly what players do when the corporate ground shifts beneath a live-service game.
The timing is notable. MLBB is heading into what may be its most visible competitive year yet. The M8 World Championship was held in Jakarta in January 2026 and became the most-watched mobile esports tournament in history. MPL Indonesia is in its 17th season. The Esports World Cup in 2026 features a $3 million prize pool with Mobile Legends as a central title. Savvy Games Group, with its deep investment in the esports infrastructure space, is acquiring a property at the peak of its competitive visibility.
That alignment could mean significant investment in the competitive ecosystem — bigger prize pools, better production, broader distribution. It could also mean monetization pressure as a new owner works to justify a $6-7 billion acquisition. Either way, MLBB in 2026 is not the same organizational entity it was when ByteDance bought it. The game is the same. The people building it are largely the same. But the strategic priorities shaping its future are about to change.
