This country boasts one of the most dynamically developing gaming markets in the Middle East. With a population of over 85 million and a high Internet penetration rate (over 88%), Turkey holds significant potential for the industry. The country’s young population is an important factor—children aged 0 to 14 account for approximately 21%, but the country does not have more exact statistics about age groups.
In this article, we’ll dive into the Turkish gaming market, its defining traits, players’ preferences, and plenty more. Some of the statistics in this article were taken from the Turkiye Game Market Report 2023.
Key statistics
The game industry in Turkey has been demonstrating solid growth in recent years. Here are its key characteristics:
- Market revenue is projected to reach $3,332 million in 2025.
- The annual revenue growth rate is expected to reach 7.66%, resulting in a projected market volume of $4,476 million by 2029.
- On the global stage, most of the revenue will be generated in the United States, and is expected to reach $141.80 billion in 2025.
- The number of players is expected to reach 25.5 million by 2029.
- User acquisition in Turkey will reach 25.8% in 2025, a figure which is projected to grow to 28.8% by 2029.
- Moreover, the average revenue per user (ARPU) in Turkey comes to $1,097.
- The Turkish gaming industry has seen a surge in the mobile game development, reflecting the growing demand among young people for innovative and culturally significant content.
According to data from 2020, popular genres include:
- Adventure games: 49.2%
- Puzzle games: 46.2%
- Racing games: 45.7%
- Sports: 45.6%
- Strategy: 39.3%
- Simulation: 38.3%
- Card games: 26.3%
- Role-playing: 21.1%
Player profile
Let’s take a look at how gaming in Turkey is characterized:
- Number of active players: around 42 million.
- Most active age demographic: 21–35.
- Proportion of female players: approximately 47–49%.
- Over 70% of players regularly make in-game purchases.
- The average time spent playing games is 1–2 hours per day.
There are also players who spend between 2 and 10 hours, but not as many:
Playing time statistics. Source
When spending their time on playing games, people’s key goal is emotional engagement, satisfaction, and relaxation. Other goals include feeling a sense of freedom and developing skills or creativity:
Players’ interests and preferred genres. Source
Gamers in Turkey fall into a few general profiles. Depending on their age, the circumstances in which people play differ:
Turkish gamer profiles. Source
Despite periodic fluctuations in the lira exchange rate, the economic situation in the country contributes to the development of digital entertainment. Nonetheless, the local market favors the free-to-play model—free games that feature microtransactions.
Game development studios in Turkey and their products
Turkey is known for studios that have given the world popular games such as Toon Blast, Royal Match, and others. Here are just a few:
- Peak Games (the creators of Toon Blast and Toy Blast)
This company was founded in 2010, and was acquired in 2020 by Zynga for $1.8 billion, a deal which amounted to a record-breaking sum for the Turkish technology sector.
Toon Blast. Source
- Dream Games (Royal Match)
Founded in 2019 by former Peak Games employees. Royal Match makes regular appearances among the top-rated match-3 games.
Royal Match. Source
- Gram Games (1010! and Merge Dragons!)
Founded in 2012 and acquired by Zynga in 2018 for $250 million.
Merge Dragons! Source
- Good Job Games (Run Race 3D)
Founded in 2017, this is a relatively young studio. The team specializes in hyper-casual games. Good Job Games has found considerable success with Run Race 3D, which has generated over 100 million downloads.
Run Race 3D. Source
The Turkish gaming industry is experiencing an active growth period. Most studios in Turkey are located in Istanbul or Ankara. They mainly focus on mobile game development, strive to attract foreign investment, and are often supported by the state in the form of grants and tax incentives.
How should games be localized for this audience?
Be sure to consider the following aspects when localizing.
- Linguistic considerations
80% of Turkish players are monolingual. This language uses an unusual grammatical system that features long words. Although some English words can be translated to ones of roughly the same length:
- “responsibilities” (16 letters) → “sorumlulukları” (14 letters)
- “to play” (6 letters) → “oynamak” (7 letters)
In other (most) cases, the difference in length is very noticeable!
- “using” (5 letters) → “kullanılmaktadır” (16 letters)
- “players” (7 letters) → “oyuncularımız” (13 letters)
- “will stay” (8 letters) → “kalacaklarmış” (13 letters)
This happens because Turkish is an agglutinative language, which means that various grammatical features are added as suffixes to root words. Therefore, when localizing interfaces, more space often needs to be allocated for Turkish text compared to English.
Aside from this, localization for this audience calls for high-quality translation that accounts for the cultural context.
The interface must also support certain unique characters. The Turkish alphabet features a few special characters that differ from those found in the standard Latin alphabet:
- İ (an upper-case “i” with a dot)
- ı (a lower-case “i” without a dot)
- Ğ, ğ (“g” with a breve)
- Ş, ş (“s” with a cedilla)
- Ç, ç (“c” with a cedilla)
- Ö, ö (“o” with an umlaut)
- Ü, ü (“u” with an umlaut)
Fun fact: the presence of two different forms of the letter “i” (with a dot and without) often creates problems during development, since many automatic case conversion systems don’t work properly with the Turkish language. For instance, “Istanbul” in upper case should be “İSTANBUL,” not “ISTANBUL.”
- Cultural sensitivities
As with many countries, it’s important for localizations to respect local traditions and religious values, adapt visual content to local standards, and bear in mind local holidays and events. Alongside many Muslim holidays, there are other significant events:
- National Sovereignty and Children’s Day (April 23rd) — a unique holiday during which children symbolically run the country. It makes for a great opportunity for in-game events, especially those targeted at kids.
- Youth and Sports Day (May 19th) — a very popular holiday, especially relevant for sports games and projects aimed at young people.
- Republic Day (October 29th) — one of the most vital national holidays, this day celebrates the founding of the Republic.
- Atatürk Memorial Day (November 10th) — a memorial day for the founder of modern Turkey.
- Victory Day (August 30th) — a national holiday dedicated to the country’s victory in the war for independence.
- Monetization
In addition to the fact that Turkey prefers the free-to-play model, the country’s financial situation should also be considered when planning monetization.
The lira is subject to strong fluctuations and has depreciated significantly against the dollar in recent years. Therefore, pricing in games must be reassessed on a regular basis.
The average salary in Turkey is significantly lower than in Europe or the US—it’s recommended to lower prices by 60–70% compared to Europe. Microtransactions are often priced between 10 and 50 lira.
Turkish players are very keen to ensure they’re getting good value for money. Small, frequent transactions have proven more effective for this market than rare, costly purchases. It’s important to provide discounts and bonuses to give customers a sense that they’re getting a good deal.
And, naturally, it’s worth getting to grips with local payment systems such as TROY, ininal, and Papara. Prepaid cards are also popular in Turkey, and there’s a growing trend of making mobile payments via cellular operators.
- Technical adaptation
Local operators include: Turkcell (the leading provider), Vodafone Turkey, and Türk Telekom.
There are a few factors to consider when localizing for domestic networks:
- 4G/LTE coverage is strong in cities, but may be unstable in rural areas.
- Currently, 5G is still being implemented.
- The average mobile Internet speed is around 30–35 MB/s.
- There are frequent fluctuations in the mobile data transfer rate.
Be sure to implement effective data caching, make games playable with a weak wi-fi or mobile connection, optimize the size of updates, use adaptive graphics quality, and implement a system for resuming downloads if the connection is interrupted.
Here at INLINGO, we do much more than simply translate text. We adapt games to the countries they’re being localized for, taking into account all aspects of the place and language. Our area of expertise includes Turkey. Drop us a message, and we’ll discuss your project.
