The Rise of Pakistan’s Game Development Scene
Did you know over 60% of Pakistan’s population is under 30? That’s not a typo. Sixty percent.
Now imagine that youth–hungry for cash, fluent in code, and increasingly tired of building another backend-as-a-service, realizing that making games isn’t just viable, it’s actually fun.
That’s where Pakistan’s mobile games industry is today: scrappy, overlooked, and quietly growing.
This week on the podcast, Mishka sat down with Saad Hameed, co-founder of GameDistrict, one of the most successful game studios in Pakistan. They talked about early hits, the lack of exits, the capital drought, and why simulation games are basically the default operating system for the local market. You can (and should) listen to the full episode.
But if you want the big picture, here’s what’s happening.
A Spark That Didn’t Catch
Mishka kicked things off by asking Saad what started Pakistan’s mobile game development scene. It wasn’t a massive funding round, a government initiative, or a major publisher moving in.
The first breakout moment was Tap Fish, a mobile hit from 2010 that was acquired by Japanese giant DeNA. It’s a bit unclear whether the game was fully built in Pakistan and later released from the U.S., or whether it simply involved Pakistani talent early on. Either way, it left a mark. It proved that a hit could come from this part of the world.
But without local infrastructure or capital, that momentum didn’t carry forward, and the ecosystem reset back to zero. There was no reinvestment, no second act, no follow-up flywheel like we saw in Finland after Angry Birds or in Turkey after Peak Games.
Instead, Pakistani developers were left to bootstrap and learn by doing, mostly in isolation. As Saad put it, it was hit-and-trial from day one, which became the unofficial development model for the next decade.
Built Without a Playbook
If Tap Fish was the spark, the fire had to be built from scratch. Unlike countries like Vietnam or Turkey, Pakistan didn’t have a Ubisoft outpost training the next generation. There were no corporate studios to absorb junior devs, no publishing frameworks, no seasoned execs to poach from.
“Pakistan is one of those really crazy ecosystems where no proper international gaming company has ever been established.” — Saad
So studios had to learn everything the hard way. No plug-and-play playbooks. Just endless loops of prototyping, failing, adjusting, and shipping again. GameDistrict was born out of this environment, with Saad and his co-founder Ahmad adapting the Y Combinator-style approach: empower small internal teams, let them build what they believe in, iterate fast, and test constantly. Games were launched every Friday. Results reviewed Monday. No time for pride or polish.
Plenty of Talent, But Experience Is the Bottleneck
Pakistan has a massive IT talent pool, and more young people are choosing games over traditional outsourcing jobs. But while the junior pipeline is deep, the ecosystem still lacks senior operators—the kind of people who’ve seen what “good” looks like across multiple cycles.
You can’t scale with juniors alone. And you can’t manufacture product intuition through A/B testing.
Studios like GameDistrict are solving this in two ways:
Acquiring not just games, but minds—bringing in experienced teams and culture along with code.
Hiring external consultants to inject product, growth, and monetization thinking at key points.
It’s slow work. But it’s also how Pakistan could evolve from a hit-driven scene into a sustainable one.
No Capital, No Credit, No Cushion
Ask any founder in Pakistan what’s holding them back and you’ll hear the same thing: capital.
Gaming-focused VCs tend to overlook the market, and even active local investors mostly lean into fintech or SaaS, where returns feel safer and more predictable. Games, for now, are still seen more as entertainment than as scalable businesses.
And yet many studios are scaling, just without the safety nets. With no venture funding or access to credit, studios stay lean by necessity and design around short payback windows. If a title doesn’t become ROAS-positive within 60 to 90 days, it’s killed.
There’s no room for slow burns. No 12-month LTV modeling. No cushion for bold, long-term bets.
That’s why publishers are circling. The games are solid, the teams are hungry, and the potential is real. With even modest access to capital or structured UA financing, this ecosystem could scale dramatically, and fast.
Why You Should Be Watching Pakistan’s Games Ecosystem
Pakistan may not be a breakout story yet, but it’s getting harder to ignore the quiet momentum building inside its game development scene. The next wave of global gaming growth may not come from where the capital is currently flowing, but from places where founders have been pushing forward without it.
What makes this market compelling isn’t one headline-making hit or a landmark exit — it’s the mindset. Teams here understand what they’re up against. They’re not waiting for permission. They’re iterating fast, building smarter, and staying hungry.
There’s no entitlement. Just ambition, discipline, and a growing belief in what’s possible. That might not make headlines yet. But it should make you pay attention.