How Winking Studios is driving business growth through joy and entertainment

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 Johnny, this belief isn’t just a romantic musing. 

It is a reality he is intimately familiar with, having run his studios since 1997, progressing to become a game art outsourcing and game development studio offering services to 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,” Johnny 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. 

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,” Johnny 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.”

Johnny’s story: from teenage RPG fan to industry builder

Johnny's passion for gaming began as a teenager, playing RPGs 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 objective is to foster a culture where both individual talent and Winking as a whole can thrive together.” 

Today, Johnny 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 IPs that energise staff and validate their craft. 

Balancing creativity with business discipline has become his defining leadership trait.

Proactive M&A strategy to build scale and specialisation

Recognising the significant opportunities and structural shifts within the industry, Johnny has undertaken a proactive 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.

Since Winking Studio’s listing on the Catalist of the Singapore Exchange in November 2023, the Group has completed three acquisitions. The most recent, its largest acquisition to date, was the US$19.8 million acquisition of Shanghai Mineloader, a studio renowned for its AAA-console expertise in April 2025.

Underscoring the effectiveness of its M&A strategy, the acquisition contributed US$4.1 million in revenue in the first half of 2025 and boosted 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 the second half of 2025.

 With these developments, headcount has also risen, climbing from 1,312 to 1,405 employees as of 31 July 2025, a mix of organic hiring and integration from Mineloader.

Johnny 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 the first half of 2025, Winking Studios reported 27.3% year-on-year 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 the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA climbed 17.9% to US$2.4 million.

Johnny notes that Winking Studios’ strong balance sheet—US$27.1 million in cash, zero debt, and US$49.4 million in indicative bookings stretching into the next 24 months—provide confidence about the company’s stability and ability to capture more 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’s already improving internal efficiency, and Johnny says the tool may eventually be licensed to other studios once fully commercialised.

By combining human artistry with AI-enhanced workflows, Johnny 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.

Johnny 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 are 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 Johnny, 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 Johnny 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 for Winking Studios

Looking ahead, Johnny 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 headcount, and proprietary technology in the works, he believes Winking is well on its way.

For Johnny, 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 Limited 

Headquartered in Singapore and dual-listed on the London Stock Exchange and Singapore Exchange (Trading Code: WKS), Winking Studios Limited is one of Asia's largest AAA game art outsourcing studios and an established game development company. 

With over 25 years of experience and established track record, the Group provides end-to-end art outsourcing, game development services and other gaming services across various platforms for the global gaming industry via three business segments of Art Outsourcing, Game Development and Global Publishing & Other Services. 

The Group 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 top 25 game development companies in the world. 

About kopi-C: the Company brew

kopi-C is a regular column by SGX Research in collaboration with Beansprout (https://growbeansprout.com), a 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.

Follow us on Telegram, Youtube, Facebook and Instagram to get the latest financial insights.