MBC opens a game studio and bans generative AI there

Middle Eastern media holding MBC Studios has brought its games division out of the shadows — MBC Game Studio. The studio made its first public appearance at Gamescom 2026 and immediately brought its debut project to the show: the action-adventure 1001 Threads of Mizan, based on One Thousand and One Nights. Work on the game has been under way since roughly 2023 — the team spent three years behind closed doors.

For CG specialists, two production decisions stand out in this story. The team was assembled as fully remote, from developers out of BioWare, Hi-Rez Studios, Ubisoft Montreal and Bungie. Generative AI was banned in production by an internal rule.

The rule against generative AI is in force right now

Studio CEO Daniel Engelhardt confirmed that MBC has given up the use of generative neural networks in development. The wording, however, is not ideological: in his words, the studio is not against the technology as such, but proceeds from the premise that a neural network works exactly as well as the person behind it.

Engelhardt describes the studio's philosophy as support for creative teams and an expansion of developers' capabilities. He added that the position may be revisited — the studio will assess it in light of what the developers themselves do and do not want to use, but at the moment the rule prohibits the use of generative AI.

The remote format turned out to be the main argument in hiring

The studio is led by Engelhardt and chief operating officer Trevor Williams. They assembled the team distributed across the world, and according to Engelhardt, that is precisely what made it possible to talk to strong candidates: people do not have to relocate anywhere. The second effect proved to be a substantive one — the team includes specialists from the Middle East who have a direct connection to the source material.

Funding is provided by parent company MBC Group; the volume of investment is not disclosed, the talk is of "significant" support. Engelhardt describes what is happening as building a business from scratch and expects the game to be able to become a franchise. At the same time, resources, in his words, are allocated carefully so that there is enough left for creative risk: the team set itself the task of making something unlike anything else from the very beginning.

The holding's owner changed while development was already under way

The developers of 1001 Threads of Mizan lived through a change of owner. In 2025, Saudi Arabia's state-owned Public Investment Fund (PIF) acquired 54% of MBC Group, buying out the stake from the investment entity Istedamah Holding Company, which is managed by the ministry of finance. The fund's financial activity has raised questions among industry figures and politicians.

Engelhardt insists that the game studio operates independently and is focused on a single task — to release a successful game and thereby raise the level of local development. He describes the region as a fast-growing market with a large number of players.

A demo of 1001 Threads of Mizan was shown at the Gamescom 2026 booth, but the studio is not naming a release window.

Why media holdings are building game studios right now

The emergence of MBC Game Studio looks like part of a broader movement: owners of film and television content are increasingly trying to enter games through their own studio with full control over production, rather than only through licensing the brand to third-party developers. A game franchise offers a long life cycle and an audience of its own, which a one-off screen adaptation usually does not.

The timing itself is probably no accident either. Against the backdrop of layoffs at major Western studios, experienced specialists are more available than usual, and the now-normalized remote format removes a constraint for a new market entrant — the absence of an established talent cluster in its own region. If the trend continues, distributed teams run by media companies from outside the industry may become a visible part of the production landscape, and competition for veterans will move away from the usual geographic centers.

Against this backdrop, a public rejection of generative AI also works as positioning — a signal to developers and to the part of the audience that is wary of generated content. How sustainable such a position is for a project with franchise ambitions will probably become clear at the stage of full production, where pressure on deadlines and budgets usually tests rules like this for durability.

What explains the generative AI ban at MBC Game Studio? Theories: insurance against lawsuits, a signal to the veterans hired, PR ahead of Gamescom.