How mobile games and Ronaldo made a 'Free Fire' 39-year-old a billionaire
Singapore’s newest billionaire is a former government employee who rode mobile sensation Free Fire into the ranks of the ultra-wealthy this week. The battle royale or fight-to-the-death title distributed by Sea Ltd. ranked among the five most downloaded games on the Apple and Google app stores for three straight quarters this year and has amassed $1 billion in adjusted revenue since launching in 2017. That propelled a tripling in Sea’s market value and the fortune of co-founder Gang Ye, a Carnegie Mellon University alum who’s worked for Wilmar International Ltd. and Singapore’s Economic Development Board. The 39-year-old joins fellow co-founder Forrest Li, whose larger stake in the fast-growing games-to-shopping company earned him a ten-digit fortune earlier this year. Ye, who moved to Singapore from China in the 1990s as a teenager and became a citizen shortly after his return from the US, has served as Sea’s chief operating officer since 2017. The executive holds an 8.4...