Dream Games, which develops mobile puzzle games, raises $50M Series A led by Index Ventures, the largest Series A raised by a Turkish startup to date
On the back of Zynga acquiring Turkey's Peak Games for $1.8 billion last year and then following it up with another gaming acquisition in the country …
Context & Ripple Effects
Zynga's $1.8B acquisition of Turkey's Peak in June 2020 validated Istanbul as a source of hit mobile game studios — and Dream Games, founded by ex-Peak people, is the first big venture bet on that thesis. The $50M Series A led by Index Ventures is the largest ever raised by a Turkish startup at that stage.
The bet compounds fast: within months Dream Games closes a $155M Series B at a $1B valuation co-led by Index and Makers Fund, then a $255M round at $2.75B by January 2022, while the capital spills across the ecosystem into Spyke's record seed and later Match-3 rounds at Good Job Games and Grand Games.
First-order effects
- Dream Games gains outsized runway for Royal Match relative to typical Series A resources, with Index Ventures doubling down as lead across subsequent rounds rather than handing the company off.
- Turkish founders get a new benchmark: the record-setting size of this round resets what local gaming teams can raise without exiting to an acquirer like Zynga.
Second-order effects
- Global funds that previously accessed Turkish talent through acquisitions — Zynga via Peak being the template — now face competition from Index, Makers Fund, Griffin, Balderton and others bidding directly for Istanbul studios.
- Peak's own alumni network becomes a repeatable deal pipeline, as successor Match-3 shops like Good Job Games and Grand Games attract dedicated growth capital within a few years of Dream Games' raise.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Turkish mobile gaming shifts from an acquisition target for Western publishers to a self-funded studio cluster with its own unicorn valuations and multi-stage investor base — though concentration in Match-3 leaves it exposed if that genre cycle turns.
- Record-setting early-stage rounds in one geography tend to pull follow-on funds in; the sequence from Dream Games through Spyke and Grand Games suggests Istanbul is becoming a permanent node in global games investing rather than a one-off arbitrage story.
The trend: Turkish mobile gaming is transitioning from exit-driven validation — Zynga buying Peak — to independently funded studios scaling to multibillion-dollar valuations on their own balance sheets.