The News
Yesterday (February 19, 2026), mobile gaming giant Scopely acquired a majority stake in Istanbul-based Loom Games, valuing the studio at over $1 billion.
Pixel Flow, released in late 2025, has attracted over 10 million players while breaking into the top-20 grossing charts in the United States. Scopely chief revenue officer Tim O’Brien said Pixel Flow has demonstrated the “rare and impressive” ability to immediately engage players and praised the creativity of its 20-person development team.
Loom Games co-founder Kübra Gündoğan said Scopely shares her confidence in the hybrid-casual market and explained the deal will deliver vital support without compromising the studio’s independence.
The Real Story Behind the Headlines
For those just following the headlines, this might seem like overnight success—Loom Studios was only 8 months old with just seed funding when it developed Pixel Flow, reaching seven-figure daily revenues within months of launch.
But this isn’t an 8-month success story. It’s a 6-year masterclass in rapid iteration, systematic learning, and the “fail fast, learn faster” philosophy in action. And therein lies the learning for the entire ecosystem.
The Genesis: Crescive Games and the Foundation Years
Before Loom Studios, founders Kübra Gündoğan and Emre Celik, fresh out of education, launched Crescive Games in 2019—a bootstrapped operation fueled by passion and determination.
The 100+ Game Laboratory
Between 2019 and 2025, Crescive Games created over 100 games and game variants through systematic experimentation. Like every new entrant, their journey started with basic hyper-casual games before evolving to hybrid-casual formats.
They received support from Turkey’s gaming community and learnings from their breakout success, Twisted Tangle, which crossed 10 million downloads within 2 months.
Many games failed. Some went unnoticed. But each became a learning opportunity:
- Testing mechanics and core loops
- Audience segmentation and demographics
- Monetization balance between ads and in-app purchases
- Publisher evaluation criteria
- Market timing for pivots
This gave them invaluable real player data across hundreds of variations.
The Ecosystem Advantage
The founders were embedded in Turkey’s gaming ecosystem—Europe’s second-largest hub by 2025 with 850 active studios. Knowledge transfer from the “Peak Games mafia” (after the $1.8B Zynga acquisition) and “Dream Games mafia” (€3B+ valuation) created a culture of excellence.
Working with publishers like Voodoo provided education in what separates publishable games from those that never launch.
The Pixel Flow Genesis: A Failed Game’s Hidden Insight
Pixel Flow didn’t emerge from thin air—it evolved from one of Crescive Games’ earlier failed variations.
The founders noticed something curious: while the overall game failed, a specific segment became obsessed with the pixel art version. The metrics for this subset were extraordinary—off-the-charts engagement and retention.
They took the mechanics this niche loved, refined them, and built an entirely new experience.
The Core Insight: Accumulated Learning Over Time
The journey reveals a fundamental truth: breakthrough wins come from accumulated learning, not sudden inspiration.
Over six years, they accumulated small wins—user acquisition improvements, metric refinement, creative confidence, technical capabilities, publisher literacy, and community insights. Together, these made the breakthrough inevitable.
The Journey Continues
This story doesn’t end with the acquisition.
With Scopely’s backing, Pixel Flow is positioned to grow even bigger. What the founders built over six years at Crescive Games, they can now scale with Scopely’s infrastructure.
The real lesson: there’s no shortcut, but there is a path. It requires systematic learning, rapid iteration, obsessive attention to player data, and persistence to compound small wins into breakthrough success.
Scopely didn’t buy an overnight success—they invested in a team that spent six years learning how to win. And with their backing, the Loom Studios team is just getting started.