Mobile Lords

In Singapore, Fuzhou or wherever games are developed, IGG battles for its piece of the gaming action.

- Anuradha Raghunathan

It was November 2012, and the $13 billion mobile gaming market was all the rage in Silicon Valley. But there was no sense of that urgency at Singapore gaming company IGG (I Got Games), which was into desktop, browser and Facebook games.

From his base in Silicon Valley, IGG’s cofounder and chief operating officer Kevin (Yuan) Xu wasn’t happy with the disconnect. He called for a meeting with IGG’s founder Zongjian Cai and two other cofounders as well as key investors at the gaming outfit’s development hub in Fuzhou in southern China. “I wanted the company to move 100% to mobile games,” says 43-year-old Xu, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Santa Cruz. “I convinced them—over two days of discussions—that there was a humongous opportunity in front of us, and if we caught it we’d be a $1 billion company.”

Cai, IGG’s reclusive 40-year-old chief executive and chairman from Fuzhou, who has a 14% stake (the largest among the founding group), instantly endorsed Xu’s strategy. IGG pivoted to mobile gaming. The 200 or so developers at that time were retrained. They worked 14-hour days to roll out IGG’S first mobile strategy game, Castle Clash, which involves the defense of a tower. The game raked in millions of dollars in the first year. In 2016 IGG released Lords Mobile, a blockbuster war-strategy game. It’s now bringing in $58 million a month.