Right after an acquisition.
CEO Brian Ward told staff on Tuesday he's stepping down, in a note reviewed by Bloomberg. "As Savvy embarks on its next period of transformational growth, this is the right time for new leadership for that evolution," he wrote.
Alnowaiser, deputy governor of the Saudi's Public Investment Fund and head of its International Investments Division, takes over as interim acting CEO.
The timing
PIF completed its 55 billion dollar acquisition of Electronic Arts recently, ended up with 93.4% ownership. Ward's exit was unexpected.
According to reports the EA deal "prompted concern internally at Savvy over how the two giant Saudi-owned video-game businesses will be run," citing people with knowledge of the companies who asked not to be identified.
PIF now owns Savvy, which owns Scopely, ESL FACEIT Group, Moonton and Steer Studios, and separately owns almost all of EA. Two enormous gaming operations, one owner. Alnowaiser led the EA acquisition and now oversees both.
Ward's note gives no reason, and Savvy hasn't announced a permanent successor yet.
What he built
Ward was running Savvy from its November 2021 founding, overseeing a 37.8 billion dollar programme to expand Saudi Arabia's position in global gaming under Vision 2030.
The acquisitions during his time were, Scopely for 4.9 billion in 2023, Moonton from ByteDance for 6 billion earlier this year, plus ESL and FACEIT merged into the Esports World Cup infrastructure. Savvy now runs 3,500 employees across 29 locations.
He came from Electronic Arts, Xbox and Activision Blizzard, where as SVP of Worldwide Studios he oversaw Call of Duty becoming the industry's first multi-studio annualised franchise.
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