After years of spending all of its time on hit-and-miss movies and TV shows, Netflix can finally add ‘game developer’ to its Twitter bio. Yesterday, the company announced its own internal gaming studio, Netflix Games, based in Finland, Helsinki.
Hello Netflix Games
This isn’t Netflix’s first rodeo but it is the company’s first internal studio. Earlier this year, Netflix paid enough money to call NextGames – another Helsinki-based mobile dev – its own. This joins the company’s other pair of devs – Boss Fight Studio and Night School Studio. Netflix has released around 26 games, though none have performed nearly as well as the streaming giant would have liked.
The announcement named Marko Lastikka as the studio’s director. You probably already know of Lastikka’s work, even if you’re not familiar with the name. He was the former co-head of Zynga, makers of Words with Friends, FarmVille and most of your mother’s other favourite games.
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“It’s still early days, and we have much more work to do to deliver a great games experience on Netflix,” said the company’s Amir Rahimi. He didn’t elaborate further on any existing projects but did add that the platform’s games would continue to be ad-free and steer clear of in-app purchases.
“Creating a game can take years, so I’m proud to see how we’re steadily building the foundation of our games studios in our first year, and look forward to sharing what we produce in the coming years”