Playtika's World Series of Poker
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The DeanBeat: Gaming is still at the mercy of larger forces

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

The week was thick with gaming news, so some folks may not have noticed that Playtika, the Tel Aviv-based social casino games company, is considering going public.

Caixin Global reported that Playtika is looking to go public because Giant Network Group has failed repeatedly in its attempts to acquire the company over the past three years from current owner Alpha Frontier. Giant chairman Yuzhu Shi created Alpha Frontier as an investment consortium to buy Playtika for $4.4 billion. Shi intended for Giant to then take over Playtika, but each attempt has failed, with the price going up each time.

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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.