How Istanbul Won the Mobile Puzzle Wars (Ep. 29)

About this episode

Mitch and Blake explore the rise of Istanbul's gaming scene and its dominance in the mobile puzzle genre.

Mitch and Blake discuss the rise of the Istanbul gaming scene, which has exploded in the last 15 years and come to dominate the incredibly lucractive "match 3" mobile puzzle genre -- a genre which represents a significant percentage of global mobile game revenue. They discuss some of the important metrics that demonstrate just now important mobile game development in Istanbul has become -- not just to the global mobile games business, but to the nation of Türkiye itself, as a source of foreign currency and tax revenue. In order to interrogate how Istanbul rose to dominate this genre, the hosts discuss the creation of Peak Games and the importance of Sidar Sahin and Rina Onur, two of Peak's founders and two important figures in the development of the Instanbul scene. They trace Peak's development through its sale to Zynga in 2020 for $1.8 billion. They discuss how Peak alumni were directly responsible for the formation of 65 new game studios, including Dream Games, which ultimately eclipses Peak as the most valuable game company in Istanbul. The hosts turn to the four factors that contributed to the success of the Istanbul scene: dollar/euro currency leverage; local government…

People in this episode

Hosts: Mitch Lasky, Blake Robbins

Topics covered

• Istanbul gaming scene
• mobile puzzle genre
• Peak Games
• game development
• match 3 games
• economic impact

Keywords

• Istanbul
• mobile games
• Peak Games
• match 3
• game studios
• Zynga
• foreign currency
• tax revenue

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Peak Games, Zynga, Dream Games

Places: Türkiye, Istanbul

More episodes of Gamecraft

• The Attention Drain (Ep. 28) · April 22, 2026 · 1h 8m
• Roblox (Ep. 27) · April 15, 2026 · 1h 22m
• 2026 Trends & Specific Predictions (Ep. 26) · April 8, 2026 · 1h 10m
• The EA "LBO" (Ep. 25) · October 15, 2025 · 37 min
• The Sum of the Parts (Ep. 24) · May 21, 2025 · 1h 10m
• AI as a Platform (Ep. 23) · May 14, 2025 · 53 min