The first Turkish event by WN Media Group was held in April 2022. Since then, the company has organized nine events in the country. A week from now, the tenth event will take place—on June 18, WN Istanbul’26 will open its doors. We spoke with Yulia Lebedeva, Executive Director and Partner of the company, about how the Turkish gaming industry has changed over these four years.

The Turkish government has announced an expansion of its support program for mobile game developers. Under this program, the authorities will reimburse local studios for part of the expenses incurred in operational and marketing needs.

At the beginning of the year, a bill was developed in Turkey, establishing a number of requirements for gaming platforms like Steam and Epic Games Store. After thorough consideration, the country’s parliament decided to approve it — but with some minor concessions.

The Ministry of Family and Social Services of Turkey has prepared a draft law, which, if passed, would impose stricter regulations on the operation of Steam, Epic Games Store, and other game stores in the country.

Adjust recently released a report on the state of the mobile app market in Turkey for the first half of 2025. We’ve selected the main findings related to gaming.

The phenomenal commercial success of just a few gaming studios has provided a powerful boost to the entire Turkish gaming industry.

Last year, Turkish developers released a total of about 90 games for consoles and PCs, as calculated by the company GameDev.ist. Their total revenue at the end of 2024 exceeded $75 million.

The Minister of Transport and Infrastructure of Turkey, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, believes that the country’s authorities should restrict access for children under 16 to social media and online games. In his view, this is necessary to protect young Turks from inappropriate content.

The company Roblox is attempting to restore access for Turkish users to its platform. It has filed a lawsuit with the intention of appealing the ban within the country.

The Turkish authorities have blocked access to the gaming platform Roblox within the country. According to officials, this was done to protect children.

The PUBG developer decided to support the residents of Turkey who suffered from earthquakes. Kim Chang-han, CEO of KRAFTON, expressed his condolences and said that his company will transfer $100,000 to the Turkish humanitarian organization AHBAP.

Last week, Turkish media reported that Sony had decided to close its office in Istanbul. On February 6, the company confirmed the rumors in a comment for the portal GamesIndustry.biz .

The turnover of the Turkish gaming market for the first time exceeded the billion dollar mark. To be more specific, he earned $1.2 billion last year. And this is against the background of growing investor interest in local companies.

The Turkish market continues to invest in mobile games. The local company Ludus Venture Studio supported three development studios at once — it invested almost $2 million in them.

The producer of the Recontact game franchise, Simay Dinc, has launched the CATS of Small Village creative camp for Turkish children from villages and small towns. Dinge believes that this is a great project for training and attracting young talents to the video game industry.

The Turkish mobile market is experiencing a real heyday. Local developers receive record investments for the country, and the games created by them become world hits. However, this was not always the case. The Rest of the World edition delved into the history of the Turkish gaming industry and talked about how Istanbul turned into the world capital of casual gaming.

AppMagic analysts found out which mobile publishers in Turkey collected the largest box office, and which — the most downloads in the first half of 2021.

Last July, Vladimir Kharitonchik, a programmer at Playtika, died on a business trip to Turkey. Portal dev.by prepared a large material in which he told how the company reacted to the death of an employee and what his family wants.

Mehmet Aydin (Mehmet Aydin) is the creator of the online farm Farm Bank, with which he drew over a hundred thousand people into a financial pyramid. In total, with the help of this scheme, he received $ 130 million, after which he went on the run. Now he has been extradited to Turkey, where he faces a term of up to 75 thousand years.