Driven by an ultra-connected youth and still-recent public policies, Morocco’s gaming industry is beginning to take shape. But it is above all individual journeys, in Morocco as well as abroad, that today trace the real contours of this industry.
On the startup side, the Kingdom has nearly a hundred, listed on the official platform of Morocco’s gaming industry (www.moroccogamingindustry.ma), most of them created after 2021. This momentum has accelerated in particular thanks to the measures put in place by the Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Communication to structure and develop the sector.
It reached a notable turning point following the first edition of the Morocco Gaming Expo, which served as a genuine catalyst, fostering the networking of young talent, the strengthening of teams, and the creation of new startups.
While CN Studio, founded in 2017 by Oussama Ouaziz, is one of the pioneers of local development of video game creation studios, others have emerged in recent years, such as Kokoro Games, Ikro Games, June Studio, Triaxis Studio, Enigma Studio, Clover Studio, Dinomite Studio, Ashira Studio, Kelbox Studio, AJB Games Studio, and also Next Level AR and Octav for immersive experiences. To these are added structures such as Kiddo Education and KNC Lab, often positioned in niches (serious games, gamification, and so on).
Small studios, big ambitions
Some studios have benefited from incubation programs to better organize themselves
Despite this diversity, the sector remains made up mostly of small teams, often fewer than ten people, with still-limited financing capacity and little access to international distribution channels. A portion of these studios have nonetheless benefited, notably since 2024, from the incubation programs launched by the ministry, in partnership with public or foreign institutions, enabling these young startups to secure funding and to organize themselves more effectively.
This structuring rests on a growing pool of talent. Profiles such as Oussama Ouaziz (CN Studio), Hicham Addy (Ikro Games), Abdellah Alaoui Mdarhri (Kokoro Games), Ilias Belabed (June Studio), Said and Aziz Bakouri (Triaxis Studio), Soufiane Khramez (Enigma Studio), and Kawtar Jalili (Kiddo Education) embody a generation of developers and game designers trained essentially self-taught, sometimes through online courses, or having passed through schools of graphic arts, design, or computer science programs.
« There are very few schools specialized in video games in Morocco, » notes Oussama Ouaziz. This constraint also partly explains why some of these skills develop outside traditional academic channels, through personal projects, freelancing, or international collaborations. It also explains the difficulty of moving from a logic of prototypes to that of industrial productions. Several games nonetheless make it possible to gauge the emergence of a « made in Morocco » production, still largely concentrated on mobile and the independent scene.
Among the most visible examples, « Talking Cactus, » « Save the Fish, » and « Slice to Score, » developed by CN Studio, have moved beyond the local arena thanks to their distribution on mobile platforms. In a different vein, « Uncursed, » developed by AJB Games Studio, reflects a more ambitious approach on PC, with distribution on Steam and several thousand downloads for its demo version.
To these are added projects such as « The Moroccan Castle, » or other games stemming from local game jams (game design hackathons), often distributed on independent video game hosting and sales platforms such as Itch.io. These productions remain marginal on an international scale, but they attest to a gradual shift from a logic of learning to a logic of creation.
At the same time, the diaspora constitutes a structuring lever for the ecosystem. Profiles such as Omar Guendeli, gameplay programmer at Ubisoft in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Yannis Moulay, game designer at Ubisoft in Paris (France), Khalid Nait-Zlay, visual effects specialist at Krafton in Montreal (Canada), or the founders of independent gaming studios Yasser Ouaziz (Ouaz Games in Dubai) and Youness Bakhouya (Qasbah Labs in Paris) illustrate the presence of Moroccan skills abroad. This outflow of talent is partly explained by the limits of the local market, but it also constitutes a potential source of skills transfer and networks for the players who have remained in Morocco.
Events and communities
Faced with these challenges, public authorities have in recent years built a dedicated strategy. The Rabat Gaming City project, led by the Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Communication, aims to create a hub bringing together training, production, and incubation. The stated goal is twofold: to attract international studios and to foster the emergence of local productions capable of exporting.
Gaming events also play a central role in the structuring of the ecosystem. The Morocco Gaming Expo, held each year in Rabat since 2024, has established itself as the sector’s flagship event, bringing together all the talent in the field: developers, startups, gamers, but also international investors and local players in the ecosystem, around conferences and e-sports tournaments.
Alongside, more hybrid formats such as Project LZ, launched in late 2025, which brought together in Casablanca content creators, brands, sponsors, and video game enthusiasts, or mainstream e-sports competitions such as the Free Fire Battle of Morocco, whose final drew more than 4,000 spectators in September 2025, are banking on content production (streams, vlogs) to amplify their reach.
Finally, the LGaming Awards, organized by LGaming.ma, the media outlet dedicated to gaming and e-sports in Morocco, honor each year the best of the country’s e-sports community.
This momentum finally rests on a generation of gaming content creators who are gaining visibility, followed by millions of people on platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. What remains now is to clear a decisive hurdle: to durably structure the sector in order to transform this talent pool into a viable and competitive industry.
Written in French by TelQuel Impact, edited in English by Eric Nielson
