The Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property (SAIP) has published a new analytical report, The Video Game Industry from an Intellectual Property Perspective, arguing that gaming has moved from a niche interest to a core pillar of the Kingdom's entertainment economy, one that now needs a matching legal foundation.

The scale is significant: the global games market was valued at roughly 187.7 billion dollars in 2024 and is projected to surpass 206 billion dollars by 2028, while Saudi Arabia's domestic market is expanding even faster, from about 2.19 billion dollars in 2024 toward a projected 4.73 billion dollars by 2033. SAIP estimates the Kingdom has around 23.5 million gamers, about two-thirds of internet users, making it the largest gaming market in the MENA region by both revenue and player base, a milestone the report links to Vision 2030's push to diversify the creative and digital economy.

The report's core argument is that a video game is not one work but a bundle of separate intellectual property rights that all need protecting. Under Saudi law, a game's source code counts as a literary work, automatically protected for at least 50 years, alongside its story, music, voice performances and motion capture. Interfaces and icons can get industrial design protection for their look, titles and characters can be trademarked for ten renewable years under GCC rules, and original technical mechanisms can be patented if they clear the usual novelty bar, though abstract gameplay ideas cannot.

Where the report gets more candid is on enforcement, which it says is lagging behind the rights themselves. It cites rampant piracy, cross-border digital distribution that outpaces territorial courts, inconsistent rulings on game cloning, near-copies with only cosmetic changes, infringement via anonymous offshore servers, and low public awareness that downloading cracked copies is even a rights violation.

To chart a way forward, SAIP surveys how other countries are tackling the same problems: the EU's notice-and-staydown rules, Japan's expanded criminal liability for illegal downloads, the US DMCA takedown system, WIPO's ALERT initiative targeting ad revenue on piracy sites, dedicated police IP units, and South Korean court decisions that have penalized game cloning even without direct code copying.

The report's message to the industry is practical: Saudi Arabia already has the legal building blocks, but the enforcement machinery hasn't fully caught up to a market expected to more than double by 2033. For studios and developers building in the Kingdom, the takeaway is to treat IP strategy as part of the development pipeline from day one.