When Johnny Jan, founder and CEO of Winking Studios, reflects on the gaming industry, he puts it simply: “In good times or bad, people will always turn to games for entertainment, connection and escape.”
To Jan, this belief isn’t just a romantic musing.
It is a reality he is intimately familiar with, having run his studios since 1997, and has progressed to become a game art outsourcing and game development studio offering services to the majority of the world’s biggest gaming companies.
Its current client roster spans 22 of the top 25 global gaming firms, including Tencent, Sony, Microsoft, Nexon and Square Enix.
Unlike headline-grabbing game publishers with viral hits — think Game Science’s Blackmyth: Wukong or Epic Games’ Fortnite — Winking Studios operates behind the curtain.
“We’re part of the value chain that brings gaming experiences to life behind the scenes,” Jan explains.
Currently, Winking Studios is embedded across four of the five stages of game development: pre-production (concepts and prototyping), production (large-scale art asset creation), release and ongoing updates.
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By providing studios with both scalability and specialised skill sets, Winking Studios helps clients manage costs, shorten timelines and enhance quality.
“People often think outsourcing is just about reducing costs,” Jan stresses.
“External partners like Winking Studios have become essential in the gaming industry, enabling gaming companies to manage the increasing scale, complexity and timely delivery of modern games while meeting player expectations for quality and creativity.”
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From teen RPG fan to industry builder
Jan’s passion for gaming began as a teenager, playing RPGs or role-playing games that transported him into rich, immersive worlds. By high school, he had taught himself coding and completed his first full game. This early success drove him to found his first studio over 30 years ago, long before Winking Studios became a global player.
“Artists have distinctive temperaments and creative flair,” he says. “My job is to match them with projects that not only inspire and excite them, but also allow their strengths to shine. One of my key objectives is to foster a culture where both individual talent and Winking as a whole can thrive together.”
Today, Jan spends much of his time cultivating relationships with game developers and artists. He believes that keeping teams motivated means securing exciting projects, empowering them to work on famous gaming intellectual properties (IPs) that energise staff and validate their craft.
Balancing creativity with business discipline has become his defining leadership trait.
Proactive M&A strategy
Recognising the significant opportunities and structural shifts within the industry, Jan has undertaken a proactive merger and acquisition (M&A) strategy that is two-pronged: expand breadth by diversifying into more art service lines and increase depth by building larger teams with specialised skills.
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Since Winking Studio’s listing on the Catalist of the Singapore Exchange (SGX) in November 2023, it has completed three acquisitions. The most recent, its largest acquisition to date, was the US$19.8 million ($25.5 million) acquisition in April of Shanghai Mineloader, a studio renowned for its expertise in AAA console games.
Underscoring the effectiveness of its M&A strategy, the acquisition contributed US$4.1 million in revenue during the first half of 2025, thereby enhancing overall performance.
More recently, Winking announced plans to launch Vertic Studios, a new high-end art production brand which caters specifically to the sophisticated needs of AAA games with substantial budgets. It is set to debut in 2H2025.
With these developments, headcount has also increased, rising from 1,312 to 1,405 employees as of July 31, a combination of organic hiring and integration from Mineloader.
Jan highlights: “Our acquisitions are about quality and capabilities to enhance our value propositions to our customers. And we have shown how our acquisitions have contributed meaningfully to our financial performance.”
In 1H2025, Winking Studios reported 27.3% y-o-y revenue growth to US$19.4 million, alongside a 38.2% rise in gross profit.
Margins improved too, with a 30.2% gross margin, up from 27.9% in 1H2024. Adjusted ebitda climbed 17.9% to US$2.4 million.
Jan notes that Winking Studios’ strong balance sheet — comprising US$27.1 million in cash, zero debt and US$49.4 million in indicative bookings extending into the next 24 months — provides confidence in the company’s stability and ability to capture further growth.
In addition to M&A, Winking is investing in technology. Its in-house tool, G-Motion AI, leverages proprietary datasets to automate and enhance character animation. Trained on years of production data, it is already improving internal efficiency and Jan says the tool may eventually be licensed to other studios once fully commercialised.
By combining human artistry with workflows enhanced by artificial intelligence, Jan believes Winking Studios can continue to differentiate itself as a partner for global developers.
An evergreen market poised for transformation
As shared in Winking Studio’s latest results, the global gaming industry is undergoing a paradigm shift. In the post-Covid era, even as many global game development companies streamline internal teams, industry revenues have continued to climb, raising a fundamental question: Who is building the games that are driving this sustained growth?
The answer lies in the rise of outsourcing and external development partnerships.
Increasingly, game development companies are adopting a leaner, more agile approach by relying on outsourced talent to deliver high-quality game assets, features and entire modules.
The global gaming industry continues to expand at pace, with total market revenues expected to grow from US$216.9 billion in 2023 to US$345.3 billion by 2028, representing a CAGR of 9.8%.
The mobile games sector, which is currently a key market of Winking Studios’ art outsourcing business segment, is expected to lead the overall industry, with a CAGR of 12.7% between 2023 and 2028.
Jan highlights that this environment gives Winking Studios a strong platform. He argues that for investors, outsourcing firms like Winking offer a way to tap into gaming’s growth without taking on the binary risks of betting on a single hit title.
In his words: “Developing gaming intellectual properties is generally capital-intensive with big risks. But our business model is not. We work across dozens of titles and gaming customers, with stable follow-up work and strong revenue visibility.”
This is why Winking’s choice of Singapore as headquarters isn’t accidental either. To Jan, the city-state’s mix of Eastern and Western business culture, mature legal system and strong governance has bolstered trust with international clients.
With its SGX listing status, the company has benefited from the credibility of Singapore’s regulatory regime, something Jan believes is crucial in securing contracts with blue-chip global clients.
“Our clients feel more comfortable when they know we meet the highest standards of governance and security,” he says.
What’s next
Looking ahead, Jan is clear about Winking’s mission: “We want to be the number one game art outsourcing platform in the world.”
With strong cash reserves, a robust acquisition pipeline, an expanding workforce, and proprietary technology in development, he believes Winking is well on its way.
For Jan, his passion is evident: “From the young to the old, everyone likes to play games in one form or another. It is the cheapest source of entertainment, and I have a deep passion for bringing joy to players through the games we create or participate in.”
About Winking Studios
Headquartered in Singapore and dual-listed on the London Stock Exchange and Singapore Exchange, Winking Studios is one of Asia’s largest AAA game art outsourcing studios and an established game development company. With over 25 years of experience and an established track record, the company provides end-to-end art outsourcing, game development services, and other gaming services across various platforms for the global gaming industry through three business segments: art outsourcing, game development and global publishing, as well as other services. The company has 13 studios across Taipei, Nanjing, Suzhou, Dalian, Tianjin, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur, with over 1,400 highly skilled employees serving a global customer base that includes 22 of the world’s top 25 game development companies.
About kopi-C: the Company brew
kopi-C is a regular column by SGX Research in collaboration with Beansprout
(https://growbeansprout.com), an MAS-licensed investment advisory platform, that features C-level executives of leading companies listed on SGX. These interviews are profiles of senior management aimed at helping investors better understand the individuals who run these corporations
