China Clears Savvy's $6 Billion Purchase of Moonton

China's market regulator has approved Savvy Games Group's $6 billion acquisition of Moonton, the studio behind Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.

China's State Administration for Market Regulation has approved Savvy Games Group's acquisition of Moonton from ByteDance, clearing the $6 billion deal for the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang developer, according to an approvals list reported November 11, 2026. [MobileGamer.biz — Data digest: China's regulator clears Savvy's $6bn Moonton deal (November 11, 2026)]

The clearance surfaced on a list of approved mergers published by the State Administration for Market Regulation, spotted by PocketGamer.biz and reported in MobileGamer.biz's data digest on November 11. Moonton, founded in Shanghai, built Mobile Legends: Bang Bang into one of the dominant mobile titles in Southeast Asia, with a professional esports circuit across the region. ByteDance bought the studio as the centerpiece of its push into core gaming; selling it to Savvy, the games group backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, ends that experiment at a $6 billion valuation. [MobileGamer.biz — Data digest: China's regulator clears Savvy's $6bn Moonton deal (November 11, 2026)]

The deal lands in a market whose top end is consolidating around a few giant live games. AppMagic's decade review, published the same week, puts Tencent's Honor of Kings as the top-grossing mobile game of 2026 so far with $1.14 billion in in-app purchase revenue through November 5, and Garena's Free Fire Max as the year's most downloaded title at 225 million installs. Krafton's mobile revenue, for scale, grew 3.2 percent year over year to $375.6 million in the third quarter. A regulator's approval list is a quiet place for a $6 billion transfer, but it is the step that makes the transfer real. [MobileGamer.biz — Data digest: China's regulator clears Savvy's $6bn Moonton deal (November 11, 2026)]