Jelly Button's first big hit is Pirate Kings.
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This mobile game studio wants Israel to embrace creativity, not just tech and monetization

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 10 min

Israel is creating a new generation of game startups. One of the promising new companies is Jelly Button Games, whose Pirate Kings mobile game has generated more than 50 million downloads since 2012, even though it hasn’t been aggressively marketed on a global basis yet.

The $30 billion mobile gaming business has made it possible for new regions to compete in games on a level playing field. And while Israel had few roots in traditional video games, it has come on strong in mobile. Israel has more than 200 game startups, not counting a bunch of real-money gambling and marketing tech companies, that are generating an estimated $1 billion in sales in 2015.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.