Turqi Alnowaiser has been named interim chief executive officer of Savvy Games Group, the video games division of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, in a leadership change reported on 1 September 2026.
The change was reported by Bloomberg News, which cited an internal memo sent to staff, and was carried the same day and in the days that followed by games trade titles and regional business media. Alnowaiser will run the group on an interim basis while the Public Investment Fund conducts a search for a permanent chief executive. No effective date was given in the reporting, and neither the fund nor the company issued a separate public statement setting one out.
The appointment follows the departure of founding chief executive Brian Ward, who had led the group since its formation in November 2021 and who told employees that the moment had come for new leadership as the business entered its next period of growth. Placing a serving deputy governor of the shareholder in the role keeps day to day oversight inside the fund while the succession process runs.
Alnowaiser is a deputy governor of the Public Investment Fund and head of its International Investments Division. He joined the fund in October 2016 and, before that, held roles at Saudi Fransi Capital and Morgan Stanley. He was elevated to the deputy governor role in 2021, when the fund credited him with driving its international investment strategy across a number of geographies and asset classes. He represents the fund on the boards of Lucid Motors, Noon, Saudi Information Technology Company, Sanabil Investments and Hapag-Lloyd. He was involved in the international investment work of the fund around the Electronic Arts transaction. His career has been in investment rather than in games operations.
Savvy Games Group was set up in November 2021 to hold the gaming assets of the Public Investment Fund, against a stated commitment of about 38 billion dollars to the sector. It acquired the mobile games company Scopely for 4.9 billion dollars in 2023 and the games business of Niantic, including Pokemon Go, for about 3.5 billion dollars in 2025. In esports it acquired ESL and FACEIT and combined them into ESL FACEIT Group, and it helped establish the Esports World Cup. The group also holds minority stakes in Nintendo, Take-Two Interactive and Bandai Namco, and employs roughly 4,000 people.
The change arrives immediately after a consortium led by the Public Investment Fund completed an acquisition of Electronic Arts valued at about 55 billion dollars, one of the largest transactions in the history of the video games industry. That leaves the fund holding two substantial positions in the sector at once. The relationship between Electronic Arts and the existing portfolio is a matter for the fund and the companies to determine, and the available reporting gives no indication that the group is being restructured around the newly acquired publisher. The esports operations of the group have meanwhile seen layoffs and the shelving of some planned expansion.
The appointment signals that the Public Investment Fund intends to hold the reins directly while it decides what its enlarged games portfolio should look like. An interim chief executive drawn from the investment leadership of the fund rather than from the games industry points to a period of consolidation and portfolio review rather than fresh expansion, and it leaves open how permanent leadership will be defined once the search concludes.
