Mobile gaming company based in Istanbul, Turkey
Peak, originally Peak Games, is an Istanbul-based mobile game studio best known for its casual puzzle titles Toon Blast and Toy Blast, both of which have consistently ranked among the top-grossing mobile games globally. Founded in 2010 by Sidar Şahin along with Rina Onur and several co-founders, the company became a defining success of the Turkish startup ecosystem.
In 2017 Peak sold its casual card-game studio (including Spades Plus and Gin Rummy Plus) to Zynga for $100 million, and in mid-2020 Zynga acquired the remaining puzzle-game business for $1.8 billion in cash and stock - the largest-ever acquisition of a Turkish technology company at the time. Peak continues to operate as a studio within Zynga, which itself was acquired by Take-Two Interactive in 2022.
The Istanbul office remains the principal development hub, employing several hundred designers, engineers, and live-ops specialists. The studio's franchises together generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual net bookings and have set the benchmark for what a Turkish-headquartered technology business can earn in global consumer markets.
Peak Games' corporate journey compresses an unusually clean set of lessons about building, partitioning, and ultimately selling a technology company from Turkey. Peak was incorporated in 2010 as Peak Oyun Yazılım ve Pazarlama A.Ş., an Istanbul-based joint-stock company - notable because many contemporaries defaulted to the simpler Ltd Şti. form. The founders chose A.Ş.
status early precisely because they anticipated venture funding, later employee stock option plans, and eventually a strategic exit, all of which are materially easier under Turkish A.Ş. rules.
Early rounds from Earlybird, Hummingbird, and Endeavor Catalyst used preferred share classes engineered to approximate Delaware-style liquidation preferences within TTK constraints, a structure that has since become common in Istanbul venture deals. The first major structural event came in 2017 when Peak carved out its card-games business and sold it to Zynga for $100 million.
Crucially, the transaction was a clean asset-and-team carve-out rather than a share sale of the whole A.Ş., which let the founders retain the puzzle franchises and continue operating. That carve-out playbook - create a separate subsidiary, put the relevant IP, contracts, and staff into it, then sell the shares of the subsidiary - is now standard for Turkish studios running multiple game portfolios.
The 2020 sale to Zynga for $1.8 billion was a pure share transaction: Zynga purchased 100% of Peak's equity for a mix of cash and Zynga stock, with founder and employee shares converting under the terms of the ESOP.
Peak's employee option plan was itself engineered via a Delaware or Luxembourg-level stock vehicle to avoid Turkish employment-tax drag on exit, a lesson many Turkish founders only learn the hard way.
For founders today: incorporate as an A.Ş., plan your ESOP in a tax-efficient offshore vehicle from day one, keep each major franchise in a carve-out-ready subsidiary, and expect any cross-border acquirer to push you to move IP ownership before closing.
Peak is headquartered in the Maslak business district of Istanbul, on the European side of the city, at the 42 Maslak office tower on Ahi Evran Caddesi. The Maslak campus houses the studio's game development, live operations, data, and executive teams, and remains the primary location for all flagship franchises including Toon Blast and Toy Blast.
Although Peak is now part of Zynga and, through Zynga, of Take-Two Interactive, the Istanbul studio continues to operate semi-autonomously under its own Peak brand and retains responsibility for the roadmap of its titles. Maslak is itself a major hub for Turkish and multinational technology offices.
Peak is a wholly owned subsidiary of Zynga Inc., which acquired 100% of Peak in mid-2020 for approximately $1.8 billion in cash and stock. Zynga itself was subsequently acquired by Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. in 2022, meaning Peak now sits inside the Take-Two corporate family as a third-tier subsidiary.
The original founders, led by Sidar Şahin, exited their equity at the Zynga acquisition, although several continued in leadership or advisory roles for a transition period. Peak retains its own management team and studio brand, and Turkey-facing contracts continue to be signed through Peak Oyun Yazılım ve Pazarlama A.Ş., the local legal entity.
Peak itself is not publicly traded, it is a subsidiary. However, its ultimate parent Take-Two Interactive is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker TTWO, so investors who want exposure to the Peak franchises do so indirectly via Take-Two stock.
Between March 2020 and May 2022, Peak's intermediate parent Zynga traded independently on NASDAQ under ZNGA before being taken private by Take-Two in a cash-and-stock deal valued at roughly $12.7 billion. Peak does not publish standalone audited financial statements in English, but Take-Two's quarterly filings break out mobile and casual-puzzle revenue performance in segment disclosures.
Peak designs, develops, and operates free-to-play mobile games in the casual puzzle category. Its two flagship titles are Toon Blast and Toy Blast, both tap-and-match style puzzlers that consistently rank among the highest-grossing mobile games globally and together generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual net bookings.
Prior to 2017, Peak also operated a successful card-games portfolio including Spades Plus and Gin Rummy Plus, which was sold to Zynga for $100 million in a separate deal. Today the studio focuses on live operations, running events, adding content, and optimising monetisation on its existing franchises, while developing new casual titles from its Istanbul office.
