Why is Cristiano Ronaldo in a fighting game?, 24/04/2025
It's Saudi Arabia’s soft power strategy, of course
Cristiano Ronaldo turns up in Fatal Fury in the latest evolution of Saudi Arabia’s soft power plans
Apple fined by the European Union for breaching competition rules
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion leads the week’s releases
| Find me on Linkedin | Follow me on Bluesky | Wishlist my book | Email me |
Hello VGIM-ers,
Welcome to another VGIM. I’ve spent most of the past fortnight writing my book. I still have four days of writing before my next deadline. Pray for me, readers.
I’ve got a few points of order before the Big Read this week.
First, I’m heading to Belfast and Dublin for a quick business trip at the start of June.
If you’d like to meet me to discuss video games, politics and policy stuff while I’m there, hit the ‘email me’ link at the top of this newsletter.
Second, I’m announcing the details of the next VGIM event at the top of next week’s email.
Get ready to sign up for a free meet-up of VGIM readers packed full of pastries, coffee and insight this time next week.
And finally, a note for VGIM Insiders. The Debrief will not be arriving on Friday due to the looming horror of my latest book deadline.
Expect to see it in your inbox on Wednesday 30th April instead, once I’ve had time to stop shrieking about the number of words I’ve written over the past few weeks.
The big read - Why is Cristiano Ronaldo in a fighting game?
Cry wolf: Why is the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo a playable character in the newly released fighting game Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves? That, my friends, is a more interesting question than you'd think.
Roster rows: SNK announced at the end of March that the world-famous footballer would be taking up arms alongside much-loved characters like Billy Kane, Rock Howard and Hotaru Futaba last month to build the hype for today’s game launch.
Soft (foot)balling it: In a puff video released alongside the announcement, CR7 - as he is so delightfully known - told the world that it was “very cool” to be part of a “big game.” He also gave his seal of approval to his football-inspired moveset because his special moves are “strong just like me.” At least try to sound excited, Cristiano.
Power play: But even though the team-up looks odd on the surface, there’s hard-edged logic to it. Cristiano Ronaldo’s inclusion in Fatal Fury is not your typical ‘brand partnership in a game’ story. Instead, it’s a tale about Saudi Arabian soft power and how its use of football and video games to change the perception of the country has come together in an odd, but potentially powerful, way.
Changing the Vision
A butterfly flaps its wings: Cristiano Ronaldo’s appearance in a fighting game appears to be an odd side effect of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy.
Action plan: First announced in 2016 by Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, the plan aims to pull Saudi Arabia away from its status as an oil nation by diversifying the economy and driving social and cultural diversification within the nation state.
Young whippersnappers: Changing Saudi Arabia’s reputation was identified as an important part of delivering that plan. Domestically, Saudi Arabia needed to change its perception to meet the expectations of its young population. Reuters reported in 2023 that 63% of the country’s 32m citizens are under the age of 30. Transforming the economic, social and cultural norms within the Kingdom and demonstrating it to young people living in Saudi Arabia is therefore crucial for Vision 2030’s success (and for keeping the House of Saud comfortably in power).
Different story: Internationally, the Saudi leadership knew that changing the perception of the state was necessary to encourage international investment within the country. Justin Hope and Bradley Scheck reported in their book Blood & Oil that Mohammed bin Salman polled people from around the world shortly after his rise to power in 2015. This polling showed Saudi Arabia’s reputation as a religiously conservative authoritarian state damaged its standing around the world. Liberalising Saudi society was not just a way to keep young people happy domestically. It was also about telling the world that the country was modernising and ready to do business.
Out with the old: Following the launch of Vision 2030, the country took steps to distance itself from its conservative past. Cinemas opened for the first time in 35 years with a showing of Black Panther. The ban on women driving was lifted. A wave of investment in new economies was symbolised by the announcement of the construction of the NEOM megacity in 2017, a wildly ambitious plan to build a tech-powered utopia near the Red Sea.
In with the medieval: But in late 2018, the modernisation mission suffered a self-inflicted setback. According to James Montague’s book Engulfed, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 in Istanbul at the hands of Saudi agents damaged both Mohammed bin Salman’s and the country’s international standing.
Softening up: With the Crown Prince “extremely concerned” about the impact of the murder on his modernisation project, the country’s strategic plans evolved. It increased the importance of investing in soft power both at home and abroad to support Vision 2030’s implementation. This led to the Saudi Arabian investment in sports and games that made the Ronaldo partnership possible.
Intertwined
Halfway house: So, how exactly did two separate soft power strategies end up meeting one another in the form of an in-game character release? Mostly, it’s a result of the country’s sports and video games strategies meeting in a useful mid-point that made the Ronaldo partnership possible.
Hosts with the most: On the sports front, Saudi Arabia has used its cash and rapidly emerging infrastructure to insert itself as a big player in the sporting world. Since 2020, the country has played host to leading golf, tennis, boxing, Formula 1 and even snooker events to change the perception of the country on the international stage.
Football crazy, football mad: The state’s investment in football has been even bigger. The country’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) bought Premier League team Newcastle United in 2021. Riyadh has hosted the Italian, Spanish and Turkish super-cup competitions (though the latter ended in acrimony). It also bankrolled over a billion dollars of transfer spend on footballers by Saudi Arabia’s top football teams, with the PIF nationalising four top sides - Al-Ahli, Al-Hilal, Al-Ittihad and Al-Nassr - in 2023 to ensure they have the financial clout to succeed on the global stage.
Stated aims: On paper, the country’s investment in sport is about delivering practical benefits to the state. It offers more events for Saudi fans to go to, especially the country’s football-mad citizenry. It has led to the construction of sports infrastructure that the population has been able to use for public health purposes. It also aims to boost tourism to Riyadh, steadily turning the city into a rival of Dubai in the minds of international tourists.
Power of perception: But the country’s investment in football has shown that playing within sports can deliver soft power wins. Institutionally, Saudi Arabia’s investment in the game cemented its relationship with the game’s governing body FIFA. This resulted in the country being awarded the 2034 World Cup, a big coup for the state. And individually, Saudi cash allowed Saudi Arabian football side Al-Nassr to snap up Cristiano Ronaldo in 2023. This has brought a man with a social media audience of over a billion people into the Saudi sphere of influence, making him a powerful ambassador for the cause.
No game plan: However, there is little evidence to suggest that the country planned to tie its games and sports strategies together.
MiSK it for a biscuit: Mohammed Bin Salman’s charitable foundation (known as MiSK) made its first move into games as part of its mission to help young Saudis “learn, develop and progress in business, literature and culture” several years before the country’s sports strategy took off.
MiSK-y business: It signed a first memorandum of understanding with SNK in 2017 to include a Saudi fighter and Saudi stage in King of Fighters XIV with the help of MiSK subsidiary Manga Productions. Following its success, MiSK bought a 33% stake in SNK via another subsidiary called the Electronic Gaming Development Company in 2020. And in May 2022, MiSK upped its stake in SNK to over 98% - effectively taking ownership of the business.
A bridge far enough: But while assuming control of SNK was important to make this partnership possible from a tactical perspective, it was the acceleration of Saudi Arabia’s esports sector as part of its video games growth plan that allowed its soft power strategies to intertwine around the Ronaldo partnership.
Diving in: In early 2022, Savvy Games Group, which had been founded the previous year with cash from the PIF and public backing from Mohammed bin Salman, bought esports businesses ESL and FaceIt for $1.5bn. By September 2022, the country had launched its National Gaming and Esports Strategy with an explicit goal to be a hub for esports events. And after hosting a flurry of tournaments with the help of its newly combined ESL|Face It esports superpower, the country announced and successfully hosted the first Esports World Cup in Riyadh last summer - a landmark moment for the competitive gaming economy.
Prestige tournaments: Again, Saudi Arabia’s hard financial investment into sport delivered soft power success. Since announcing and hosting the Esports World Cup, Saudi Arabia has secured two strategic partnerships to host competitive games tournaments on behalf of two of the world’s biggest sporting bodies: FIFA for its virtual football finals and the International Olympic Committee for the first-ever esports Olympics due in 2027.
Influencer marketing: And crucially, Cristiano Ronaldo played a public role in this success story. In 2023, the footballer appeared on a panel with Mohammed bin Salman to promote the announcement that the first-ever Esports World Cup was set to take place. His influence gave the tournament immense reach, providing credibility to the wider strategy in the process.
Opportunity knocks: So, with Fatal Fury in development and set for inclusion in future Esports World Cups, I think someone spotted an opportunity to explicitly tie together the two strategies. And with Ronaldo steadily reaching the end of his footballing career, immortalising him in a game allows Saudi Arabia to continue to trade on his reputation - benefiting its sports, games and state-building soft power plans in the long term.
Siuuuuu?
Expected goals: So, will the playful partnership achieve its goals? While the effects of soft power plays are always hard to assess, I think there’s a reasonable chance it’ll succeed for a few reasons.
Actually fun: First, the partnership looks like it has been well executed in-game. Fatal Fury has reviewed well before launch, which means that the game is likely to find an audience amongst the fighting game community. And while Ronaldo’s inclusion raised eyebrows, feedback from a recent fighting game event in New York suggests that his football-themed move set is good. This suggests that Ronaldo’ll have mechanical play value beyond meme value, making him a practical pick for players in years to come.
Missed points: Second, there has been less pushback against the move than I expected. Eurogamer referenced Ronaldo’s inclusion in the game as an ‘ink stain that is hard to ignore’, due to its connection to the Saudi state building context. But given that outlets like PC Gamer failed to make the connection at all in its review of the game, I think the soft power subtext will go mostly unnoticed amongst the average player (which is, of course, largely the point of doing something like this).
Making noise: And finally, I think that the partnership will work because it’ll spill out into social media in a way that fighting game content simply wouldn’t. The combination of Cristiano Ronaldo’s social media reach and the enthusiasm of his fanbase (as anyone who has ever said ‘Lionel Messi is good at football’ knows) means that this tie-up will easily do numbers on social video platforms like TikTok and streaming services like Twitch.
Sophisticated thinking: Even if it doesn’t succeed, CR7’s cameo in Fatal Fury represents something bigger. His inclusion in the game is an output of a sophisticated soft power strategy. By roping a Portuguese footballer into a Japanese-made fighting game, Saudi Arabia is showing how capable it is of inventively promoting its interests. This makes this partnership, and Saudi Arabia’s wider work in games, something that other states need to watch carefully in the future.
News in brief
Upsetting the Apple cart: Apple has been hit with a €500m fine by the European Union for failing to follow rules set by the Digital Markets Act. The company was whacked with the penalty for stopping companies from ‘steering’ consumers away from its App Store to alternative platforms. Epic Games cited this as evidence of Apple’s ‘malicious compliance’, calling on policymakers in other territories to adopt similar rules. Meta has also been fined for a separate rule breach.
Ad-verse news: In other Big Tech In Court News, a US judge has ruled that Google holds two illegal monopolies in the country. A judge in Virginia ruled that the company unfairly dominates the markets for advertising publishers online and the advertising exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers. This could lead to the company being forced to sell parts of its business to satisfy antitrust prosecutors.
Disunity: Unity 6 has gone offline in China and is being replaced with a different version designed specifically for the Chinese market. Level 80 reports. While the move has happened at the same time that China and the US have locked horns over trade, this looks more like an effort by Unity to comply with local laws about how software services operate within the country.
Unintended consequences: Discord users are kicking off in Australia and the UK after the company experimented with introducing age verification to the platform. The move has likely been prompted by both countries’ Online Safety Acts, which are pushing providers of user-to-user communication services to effectively work out the age of the people on the platform. But with users on social media accusing Discord of invading their privacy, regulators may need to do more work to inform the public of the practical impact of online safety rules on their day-to-day digital lives.
Switched back on: And in a slice of good news, pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch 2 are finally set to open in the US on Thursday after weeks of uncertainty. Nintendo has confirmed that the cost of the console is sticking at $450, despite the introduction of Trump tariffs. But Nintendo has suggested that the price of accessories will be affected, so best stock up on as many of those new Joy-Cons as you can buy.
Moving on
Hoby Darling has been appointed President of Riot Games…Rhys Elliott is Head of Market Research at Alinea Analytics…Carsen Taylor is the new Senior Product Manager, Fortnite Growth and Creator Monetisation at Epic Games…Tobias Gadow is now a Key Account Manager at Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe…And Katerina Dudinskaya has been appointed as the new CEO for Goodville…
Jobs ahoy
Scopely needs a Senior Producer, IP Collaborations on Monopoly Go!..Chip licensing biz Arm is hunting for a Content Creator…MIDiA Research is looking for a Games Industry Analyst…Larian Studios is hiring a Story Department Lead…And Supercell wants a Senior Film & TV Development Executive out in LA, if that’s your bag…
Events and conferences
gamescom latam, São Paulo - 30th April- 4th May
A.MAZE, Berlin - 14th-17th May
Digital Dragons, Kraków - 18th-20th May
Nordic Game, Malmö - 20th-23rd May
Summer Game Fest, Los Angeles - 6th June
Games of the week
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered - Remaster of one of the greatest RPGs of all time landed across platforms earlier this week.
Clair Obscur | Expedition 33 - Terribly named, but well-received, RPG drops across console and PC.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy - 15 students must defend a school from monsters for 100 days in the new adventure game from the brains behind Danganronpa and Zero Escape.
Before you go…
Michael Bay and Sydney Sweeney are teaming up to make a video game based on OutRun with support from Universal, according to Variety.
Will it be another Minecraft-style hit where the quality of the film makes little to no difference to the, erm, rabid OutRun fanbase?
Or will it be a Borderlands-style flop that people will sleep through during hungover afternoons on the sofa?
I’m sticking £50 on the latter.