It’s worth having this conversation plainly, because it’s going to come up every time someone mentions buying a Neo Geo product in 2026 — and it came up loudly in the comments of Time Extension’s recent Evercade Neo Geo article.
The facts: MBC Group, a Saudi media conglomerate, acquired a majority stake in SNK in 2020. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is connected to MBC Group. This is not in dispute. Purchasing SNK products — the Neo Geo AES+, Evercade Neo Geo cartridges, digital SNK releases on Switch or PS4 — generates revenue that ultimately flows, in part, toward a company with Saudi government ties.
What you do with that information is entirely your decision. But it’s worth making the decision consciously rather than by default.
The Case for Buying
The games are the games. Metal Slug is Metal Slug. Garou: Mark of the Wolves is Garou: Mark of the Wolves. King of Fighters 2002 is King of Fighters 2002. None of that changed when Saudi money came into SNK. The developers who made those games were Japanese. The hardware that ran them was Japanese. The culture that produced them was Japanese. The ownership is a corporate layer that sits above all of that.
The argument that you should avoid SNK products because of Saudi ownership, taken to its logical conclusion, would also mean avoiding a significant proportion of global entertainment, sport, and technology. Saudi sovereign wealth funds have invested in companies across gaming, music, sport, and media to an extent that makes consistent avoidance practically impossible. You draw your own line.
There’s also an argument — one worth taking seriously — that the people who work at SNK Japan, who are maintaining and expanding the Neo Geo library, licensing games to Evercade, and developing new products, benefit from those purchases. The relationship between consumer spending and political outcomes at sovereign wealth fund level is not straightforward.
The Case for Not Buying
The counterargument is also serious. Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is a matter of international record. The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 was attributed by the CIA to Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women, LGBT people, and political dissidents has been extensively documented by human rights organisations.
If your position is that you will not give money to companies connected to this ownership, that’s a coherent and defensible choice. The fact that Saudi money has permeated many industries doesn’t mean that adding more of your money to the flow is neutral. Every purchase is a small signal, even if the signal is genuinely small.
Time Extension’s piece on this, titled “We, The Consumers, Need To Vote With Our Wallets,” put it clearly: “You have the right to boycott, and the right to buy.” That’s exactly right. What matters is that the choice is made knowingly.
What pc-play.com Does
We cover Neo Geo hardware and games because they’re historically significant, technically extraordinary, and in 2026 experiencing a genuine moment of renewed accessibility. We’ll continue to cover them.
We’ll also continue to note the ownership situation in relevant articles — not as a moral instruction, but as information that some readers will want and that it would be dishonest to omit. What you do with it is yours to decide.
The Neo Geo AES+ is an extraordinary piece of hardware. The games are genuinely great. The ownership is what it is. All three of those things are true simultaneously.
For the full technical picture on the Neo Geo AES+, see our announcement piece. For the broader context of the Neo Geo’s history, see our Neo Geo Complete Guide.