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Maysalward founder talks 2026 MENA games industry: "Capital on its own has never created a games industry anywhere"

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Maysalward founder talks 2026 MENA games industry: "Capital on its own has never created a games industry anywhere"

The MENA region has seen impressive growth in recent years, with MENA-3 (Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt) in particular projected to reach $3 billion in player spending by 2030.

Amid the region’s development and opportunities, there are also challenges. So, ahead of Pocket Gamer Connects Jordan on November 7th and 8th, we speak with Maysalward founder and CEO Nour Khrais for the latest market perspectives.

PocketGamer.biz: How would you assess the MENA games scene at the moment?

Nour Khrais: We have stopped having to prove that gaming is a real industry here. That argument is over, and I am glad, because I spent close to 15 years making it in rooms where nobody wanted to hear it.

The question I care about in 2026 is a different one. We have attention, capital and players. Can we turn that into studios that ship and survive?

I would be careful with the word region, though. There is no single MENA market. Saudi Arabia is building at a scale nobody else here can match, through investment, esports and infrastructure. The UAE has become the easy place to base a publisher or bring in international talent.

Egypt has the population and the engineers. Jordan has more than 20 years of mobile development, publishing and training behind it, which is a different kind of asset and often an underrated one.

What I see across all of them is a shift from consumption to production. For a long time MENA was described as a place where people play games.


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