Peak Games See Strong Social Gaming Growth in Turkey, MENA Region

Peak Games, which was founded by Sidar Sahin, counts some of the most successful entrepreneurs amongst its management team.  Launched in October 2010, Peak Games has quickly established itself as the leading social gaming company in Turkey and MENA (Middle Eeast/near Asia), catapulting to the position of 10th largest social gaming company globally by number of daily active users (DAU) (source: AppData.) Much of this rapid rise is due to Peak’s focus on games based on traditional Turkish and Arabic card and board games, as well as localized content showing a strong understanding of its audience.

“We’ve driven phenomenal growth due to our understanding of what players want, reflecting the culture and tastes that make high growth regions like Turkey and MENA unique,” said Sidar Sahin, chief executive officer and founder of Peak Games.  “With social media use exploding in markets such as Turkey, Brazil and the wider MENA region, we believe that the next big Facebook games will come from an emerging market.  Thanks to this investment from Earlybird, Peak is well positioned to lead this second wave of social gaming growth.”

 “Peak Games demonstrates that the social gaming market is truly a global one,” said Michael Pachter, analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities. “Companies like Zynga and Nexon dominate in their markets because they fundamentally understand their customers and know how to create culturally-relevant content. I think Peak Games has done the same thing for Turkey and MENA and arguably already owns those markets.”

Peak Games Dominating High Growth Emerging Markets

Turkey is already the fourth largest Facebook market, with over 28 million users and growing.  Taken as a whole, the MENA region is one of the fastest growth areas for Facebook and social networking, with the number of users growing by 78 percent year over year and is forecasted to reach 150 million users by 2015.

Peak Games Statistics

• Over 10M users play Peak’s games every month.
• Every day more than 2M people meet, greet, chat and pass time with each other while playing Peak Games.
• Peak’s games are played in 5 time zones, 4 continents and 5 languages.
• Game titles include: Okey, Okey Plus, Poker Star, Komşu Şehir, Komşu Kabile, Ikon Kiz (FabGirl), Bizim Dünya, Komşu Çiftlik and Petiler.
• Peak Games’ most popular game is card-based Okey, which is by far Turkey’s most popular online social game with 4.5 million monthly active users (MAU).
• Women and girls enjoy freely dressing their avatars in Ikon Kiz (FabGirl), which is the first successful game in its genre.
• Since December 2011, Peak Games Sales grew by 3,216%.

In addition to developing its own IP (intellectual property), Peak has partnered with several of the leading Western social gaming developers including The Broth which created Barn Buddy, and MagnetJoy which created Pet Party, to create and publish localized versions of those games.  Peak Games’ understanding and localization know-how allows it to cater to the regions’ specific cultural needs and lifestyle in a way that non-local companies simply cannot match.

"The success Peak Games has had to date proves that the next big game genres on Facebook will offer culturally-relevant content and deliver a fully localized experience," said Jason Whitmire, partner at Earlybird Venture Capital. "We believe that this investment will support the company as it taps the rapidly-growing social gaming potential in emerging markets."