The archive · Consumer Apps · Product decision · 2025–2026
Loom Games bets a 20-person studio can crack US top-20 grossing; Scopely pays $1B
Istanbul's Loom Games built Pixel Flow around one obsessive mechanic and hit the US top-20 grossing chart in months; Scopely then paid $1B+.
Loom Games
What the business is
Loom Games is an Istanbul mobile-game studio whose debut hybrid-casual puzzler, Pixel Flow, sends colored balls from pigs onto matching pixel blocks to clear boards; the game monetizes through IAP and ads.
Starting capital：$2M seed in Jan 2026 at a $36M valuation from Arcadia Gaming Partners' Akin Babayigit and early-stage fund e2vc; Scopely's majority-stake deal in Feb 2026 valued Loom at over $1B, under 60 days after the seed closed.
How it started
CEO Kübra Gündoğan and CTO Emre Çelik first co-founded Istanbul indie studio Crescive Games in 2019, where they spent six years building more than 70 prototypes before Loom Games was founded in 2025. Their previous hybrid-casual puzzler, Twisted Tangle, was published by Rollic Games and passed 10 million downloads within two months of launch, validating their prototype-driven method.
What happened
Pixel Flow launched in August 2025 and scaled fast: it surpassed 10 million players and hit roughly $2M in daily revenue within months, backed by a debt-financed user-acquisition loop after the team verified the game's return on ad spend. In January 2026 the studio raised a $2M seed at a $36M valuation; weeks later, on 2026-02-18, Scopely announced a majority-stake acquisition with a multi-year, performance-based structure valuing Loom above $1B — making it Türkiye's seventh gaming unicorn and one of the fastest seed-to-unicorn leaps in gaming. The founders stayed on to lead the ~20-person studio.
How it ended up
Still scaling as of 2026-09-02: under Scopely majority ownership, Loom Games kept its team and roadmap in Istanbul, and Pixel Flow won Game of the Year plus three other awards at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2026 on 2026-08-25, with AppMagic estimating roughly $200M in first-year gross player spending.
Background
Loom Games is the Istanbul studio founded in 2025 by Kübra Gündoğan and Emre Çelik, who had spent six years and more than 70 prototypes at their earlier studio Crescive Games refining a disciplined test-and-kill method. Their debut title, Pixel Flow, sends colored balls from cartoon pigs onto matching pixel blocks, clearing rows and advancing players through puzzle levels — a hybrid-casual game that pairs simple core loops with progression, live events and ads.
The path to Pixel Flow began with an apparent failure: a prototype built around pixel mechanics looked weak in testing, except for a small group of users who became obsessed with the pixel-clearing behavior. Loom isolated that single mechanic and rebuilt the whole product around it, launching in August 2025. The game crossed 10 million players and roughly $2M in daily revenue within months, and became the only casual game released in the previous 12 months to break into the monthly US top-20 grossing chart.
Financially the founders played offense with leverage: after verifying return on ad spend, they debt-financed user acquisition to scale faster without heavy equity dilution, then raised a $2M seed at a $36M valuation in January 2026. Less than 60 days later, Scopely announced a majority-stake acquisition valuing Loom above $1B, making it Türkiye's seventh gaming unicorn. AppMagic estimates put Pixel Flow's first-year gross player spending near $200M with a $27M monthly peak in April 2026 and 30M+ downloads across both major stores.
As of September 2026 the studio still operates from Istanbul under Scopely ownership with the founders leading, and Pixel Flow was named Game of the Year at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards on 2026-08-25, also taking Best Game Innovation, Best Developer and Rising Star. The open question is longevity: whether the studio's prototype machine can repeat a top-20 grossing hit now that its first title is part of a giant publisher's portfolio.
What has to be true
- The founders' six years of 70+ prototypes built a repeatable system for finding strong player signals instead of betting on intuition.
- Isolating one obsessive behavior from a failing prototype turned a probable kill into the company's entire product — a cheaper wedge than inventing a genre from scratch.
- Debt-financed user acquisition let Loom scale on validated ROAS while keeping equity for the founders until the $1B Scopely deal.
- A 20-person team and one clean mechanic beat competitors who stitched together three or more systems, giving Pixel Flow clarity in a crowded casual market.
What can be applied
Systematic, high-volume prototyping can surface one obsessive mechanic worth rebuilding a whole game around — and a fast strategic sale can beat slow equity dilution once unit economics are proven.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-02, Loom Games is scaling under Scopely majority ownership: the founders stay on, the studio remains in Istanbul, and Pixel Flow keeps running with roughly $200M in estimated first-year gross player spending. It won Game of the Year, Best Game Innovation, Best Developer and Rising Star at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2026 on 2026-08-25. The deal ranks among gaming's fastest seed-to-unicorn arcs — $36M in January 2026 to $1B+ in February 2026. The test now is whether Loom's prototype pipeline can produce a second Pixel Flow inside Scopely's portfolio.
Sources
- Scopely acquires majority stake in Pixel Flow developer Loom Games
- Scopely Acquires Majority Stake in Loom Games at USD 1 Billion Valuation, Marking Türkiye's New Unicorn
- Pixel Flow wins Game of the Year at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2026
- Scopely Secures Majority in Loom Games at $1B+ Valuation
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