Savvy Games Group teams with Genvid to bring AI tools and training to Saudi Arabia | exclusive interview

Savvy Games Group signed a deal Genvid Holdings and Massive Studios to enable Saudi Arabia-based game studios, independent developers, and universities access specific AI tools and platforms for creative development, game content, cinematics, and marketing.

To be clear, this memorandum of understanding (MoU) doesn’t apply to Savvy Games Group and its large game businesses like Scopely, ESL Face-It and Niantic. Rather, Genvid was asked to work with Savvy’s incubator efforts as part of its drive to create jobs inside the kingdom, said Jacob Navok, CEO at Genvid Holdings, in an interview with GamesBeat.

You’re also not going to see Electronic Arts using these tools as a result of this memorandum of understanding, as Savvy isn’t buying EA; the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund is doing so, as part of a partnership of buyers.

In addition to bringing advanced AI tools to the local games ecosystem, the partnerships have a significant focus on supporting talent development in the fast-growing games industry in Saudi Arabia through curated training initiatives, mentorship programs, and educational resources for the proprietary platforms and infrastructure offered by Genvid Holdings and Massive Studios.

“We’ll be working with them to bring our tools to their studios, not just the tools, but also teaching master classes and educating their staff on how to start to build game cut scenes, assets, videos, trailers using AI,” Navok said.

The Genvid AI studio is an end-to-end production studio for anyone looking to build video games, television episodes, film with generative AI, he said.

“We can take any script, keyframe, image asset, and allow for you to generate storyboards, allow for you to generate different iterations. We’ve got plugins into common tools from Nuke, which is used in a lot of films, to Adobe’s tools, to Unreal Engine,” Navok said.

Savvy will be assisting both partners in strengthening their presence in the Saudi games ecosystem, building relationships with local game developers and universities, and facilitating access to the advanced AI tools along with the training initiatives.

Genvid Holdings is a New York-based media technology company develops the Genvid Studio-Grade Platform, an enterprise AI workflow built for large-scale production of games, films and television.

Genvid’s provenance system tracks all inputs into the system and attests to the origin of what is created in the system- so it can guarantee that your output only used your approved models, likenesses and other assets. Working with well-known industry leaders such as Konami, Bandai Namco, and Warner Bros. Games, Genvid has also delivered a series of high-impact, interactive gaming and storytelling experiences, where players and community affect in-game events, across popular IPs, including DC, Silent Hill, The Walking Dead, and Pac-Man.

Massive Studios is an AI-native production and production-services company who creates visual narratives and digital storytelling from features, TV, and movie trailers to video games, animations, and commercials. With clear commitment on ethical practices in generative AI and IP protection, Massive Studios ensures ethically sourced data in training their AI models and tools.

Genvid Technologies CEO Jacob Navok. And the company is being careful about who owns what as it’s created.

“Very importantly, we are doing what we call provenance tracking, especially for games and films that are going to be released commercially,” he said. “Every image that gets generated, every art asset that is created, every keyframe that is approved or even not approved, it goes into the system. It’s tracked, and then we can attest at the end of creation on its tracking.”

If, for example, the user is a large studio, then it may be using models that it has privately trained on premise.

“We will be able to attest if you’re using the Genvid system, that everything that was created using our system matched with the legal requirements and have human in the loop, so that they can copyright it,” Navok said.

“The next era of game development and entertainment will belong to creators who can harness the power of artificial intelligence to imagine, build, and scale experiences in entirely new ways,” said Nika Nour, senior vice president and head of international business development at Savvy, in a statement. “We are building the foundation for Saudi Arabia’s next generation of game development, providing developers with advanced AI capabilities to push the boundaries of storytelling and gameplay while helping creative teams to focus on what matters most: creating exceptional experiences for players around the world.”

Savvy Games Group has a dual mission. One is to build a games empire around the world. The other is to create a games ecosystem in Saudi Arabia that can support local game and film jobs, as the kingdom sees the need to diversify its economy beyond oil. It has chose digital technology, and is emphasizing games and film within that category, as a focus for creating jobs.

That’s why Genvid and Savvy are connecting on a high level. But they also have a personal connection. Nour used to work at Genvid and is very familiar with its technology and strategy, and that enabled a strong connection between Genvid and Savvy at the outset.

“Saudi Arabia is the future of media development, and Savvy Games is leading the charge in this fast-growing frontier, not only video games but also the wider entertainment industry,” Navok said. “Our AI platform, already used by some of the biggest media companies in the world, will help studios in the region build AI-native products so that they can be leaders in this next era of entertainment. We are delighted to work with Savvy to directly connect with the local ecosystem there and enable their success.”

“The expertise we offer in AI-powered content creation is quite unique in terms of finding the balance between AI innovation and human creativity while being respectful to intellectual property. We look forward to sharing this with the aspiring developers and creative professionals in Saudi Arabia to help build the talent there and explore future collaborations.” said Reza Sixo Safai, cofounder at MassiveStudios, in a statement.

These partnerships are in line with Savvy’s strategic priority to help build Saudi Arabia’s games
ecosystem and the wider Vision 2030 and the National Gaming and Esports Strategy goals to support capability development and talent growth in game development and publishing.

Savvy Games Groupwas formed in 2021 with a mission to drive long-term growth and
innovation in the games and esports industry. Backed by its shareholder, the Public Investment
Fund of Saudi Arabia, Savvy deploys capital over long-term horizons through acquisitions, investments, and business ventures.

By expanding its portfolio and growing the games and esports ecosystem, it
is shaping the future of the sector on a global scale. As Saudi Arabia’s National Champion for
Games and Esports, Savvy is also focused on developing the sector’s domestic ecosystem.

The team started its work in April 2025 and it released its first commercial system in December.

“We have a number of large enterprises using the system right now. I believe at last count it was close to 20, and that is film and game studios around the world,” Navok said. “We have a number of U.S. enterprise customers using the system.”

But he said he believes that places like Saudi Arabia, India and Southeast Asia are going to be much more aggressive on this technology.

Navok noted the first reason that AI tech could take off elsewhere first is just culturally and politically.

“The kind of anti-AI unionization efforts that we’re seeing in the United States are simply not happening in those regions,” he said. “For reasons that you would expect, especially China and India, are incredibly aggressive in this because these were places that did not have access to cheap animation technology. They had access to cheap labor and cheap labor plus cheap animation technology, which is what AI does, allows you to quickly create.”

He noted that Geostar in India is building full animated series using Gen AI. That means a large numbers of users are prompting, creating thousands of clips. Then they pick the best and edit them.

“Our system is much more efficient than that, but the point is that when you’ve got inexpensive labor capable of doing the prompting, plus inexpensive technology, you can create outputs that for their audiences are very good quality,” Navok said.

He also noted that the No. 1 game of 2025 was Steal a Brain Rot on Roblox in terms of concurrent users. A lot of such games on Roblox are AI slop, he said, “for lack of a better word.”

“Every single one of them is an AI creation, and so kids who are growing up in this environment don’t really see a difference. When I see my kid watching YouTube, watching AI slop videos, and not even batting an eye most of the time,” he said. “The kids may be aware that it’s AI. They’re going to grow up in an environment where you will have AI-generated art, characters and worlds that they find appealing. They don’t really care.”

Navok added, “And very soon, you’ll have games that are entirely AI prompted, where you just write a couple of sentences and the output comes out. I’m not saying that those are going to be great games, but then, Steal a Brain Rot, frankly, is not a great game. The point that I want to make is, if you look at where Steal a Brain Rock is the most powerful, it’s in the United States. There are lots of players, but you go to Latin America, you go to Southeast Asia, you go to India, where all these kids, their primary and only computer is a cell phone, and they will never own a game console, and they will never own a gaming laptop. You get hundreds of millions of players across these titles, just way bigger than anything we’ve seen.”

Navok noted that the U.S. share of game sales is declining, and he believes the places that become AI native now are the ones that will build games faster and cheaper.

The question is whether the highest quality games will win in places like the U.S., or if AI slop or games that are built by small teams with AI will win. The likely result is the U.S. will be disrupted by game developers in other parts of the world, he said.

“That’s why we wanted to partner with Savvy Games Group in Saudi Arabia,” Navok said.

The slow adoption of AI in the U.S. will create the opening for other countries to move up the food chain, he said. I asked Navok if these tools can take amateur or indie game developers beyond AI slop.

“I am more confident in that than I am confident that it is or is not going to rain tomorrow. The quality of coding coming from the AI models is outstanding, just way beyond what I would have predicted even six months ago,” Navok said.

He added, “I think that these systems are getting very close to recursive improvement, which means that they will start coding themselves.”

Navok also noted that the foundational AI models to create AI videos or games has been improving around the world, not just in the U.S.

“Video generation and coding generation is getting so good that a lot of the stuff that you will purchase will be generated with it, and it will not be slop,” Navok said.

DC Heroes United Genvid has made games based on IPs like The Walking Dead and the DC Universe. There’s no AI in the DC Heroes United game, and Genvid will continue to operate that title. Navok said that the AI work is roughly have the company now, but the work is firewalled in terms of the use of AI.

Looking at his own company, Navok said that, even with AI tools, “The fact of the matter is, even with these tools, I still need art teams, I still need UX teams, I still need QA teams. I still need programming teams. I may not need some of the outsourcers that I’ve been using in the past. One thing people don’t understand about a number of our products is Genvid has never had an internal game studio, and so if you look at our The Walking Dead product, that was done with Sky Skybound and Pipeworks.”

The same outsourcing strategy was used for Genvid games like Pac-Man for Meta, Silent Hill and more. Genvid will continue with that strategy, even as it employs AI tools.

As for his expectations from Saudi game makers, Navok said, “I look forward to content that’s going to be different than what you would see from U.S. content being built with AI. I’m a big believer in that international opportunity.”



The post Savvy Games Group teams with Genvid to bring AI tools and training to Saudi Arabia | exclusive interview appeared first on GamesBeat.