Saudi Arabia-based mobile game developer FLOATY Studio has raised $1 million in a funding round led by Merak Capital, through its Merak Gaming Fund.
Founded in 2023 by Fahad Qaysi, Zeyad Almalki, and Abdullah Salah, the studio builds casual and hybrid-casual mobile games for international audiences. It currently has two titles in development: Pirasea, a pirate-themed strategy game, and Hero Squad, a sci-fi action game focused on assembling heroes to fight robotic enemies.
Why it matters
The capital will be used to accelerate the studio's game portfolio, strengthen production capabilities, and support international growth — part of an explicit push to establish Saudi-developed intellectual property in global markets.
For international partners and investors, the round is a small but precise marker: the Merak Gaming Fund, an $80 million vehicle, is systematically placing bets on homegrown studios that aim to compete on content, not just service the local market. The fund's existing portfolio already includes game companies Qwacks and Khosouf Studio.
The corridor lens applies naturally here. Saudi Arabia is building a domestic content-creation engine while India remains the world's largest talent pool for game development and publishing services.
A studio like FLOATY, funded to produce original IP, will need animation, QA, engineering, and live-ops partners — and Indian studios are the most probable supply. This is less a single $1M headline and more a signal that the pipeline from Riyadh VC to Indian game services is being primed.
