Record $25 billion in deals may be game industry’s Everest

This year’s record $25 billion in game industry deals in over just 9 months could mean we’ve hit the peak of the market, as detailed in tech adviser Digi-Capital’s new Games Report Q4 2018. Last time this happened, games investment and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) plunged into a games deals ice age at the lowest level in a decade. The game industry-deal cycle has swung from boom to bust twice already since 2010, so the next six months will determine if history repeats itself or the dollars continue to flow.

We saw $3.8 billion invested in game companies between January and September, which is 50 percent higher than the previous full-year record from 2017. Games M&A also hit a near record $20.1 billion in the first three quarters. But as Digi-Capital forecast at the start of the year, the game IPO market has plunged over 90 percent from 2017’s record $17.1 billion to just $1.1 billion in 2018. While Epic’s $1.25 billion investment round in Q4 has already taken games investment over $5 billion for full-year 2018, these dynamics could still be early signs of game over (for now).