Saudi Arabia Once Banned Videogames. Now, It Wants to Export Them.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—For years, this kingdom’s Islamic clerics waged a war on videogames, banning popular titles such as “Pokémon" for promoting blasphemy, violence and laziness. Now, Saudi Arabia is pouring $40 billion into a bid to become a world leader in a videogame industry beloved by its booming youth population.
The Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, owns multibillion-dollar stakes in the companies involved in producing “Pokémon" and other global hits the Saudi clerics once banned, like “Diablo" and “Red Dead Redemption." The PIF splashed out almost $5 billion for the California videogame publisher Scopely and increased its stakes in Nintendo and Electronic Arts. And the kingdom is dangling high salaries in front of Westerners to come here and help build a local industry almost from scratch.
In the most visible sign of the push, Riyadh hosted the world’s largest esports and gaming event in July and August: the Gamers8 conference. In Boulevard Riyadh City, a new development evocative of Times Square, thousands of professional and amateur gamers competed for a record $45 million prize pool organized by the state-backed Saudi Esports Federation—an open embrace of a digital medium long devoured by Saudi youth in private.
The promotion of videogame culture is part of a long-term project by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—a 38-year-old avid gamer—to build a sense of nationalism and identity separate from the ultraconservative Islam that had long defined life in the kingdom, said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University who studies Saudi Arabia closely. It is happening alongside a wave of cultural changes under Mohammed, with the kingdom now hosting raves in
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