Night School’s Unhinged, released on Netflix six weeks ago. Netflix continues with video games, but once again reduces the number of studios it owns that create games. The streaming giant is closing Los Angeles-based studio Night School, which it acquired in 2021, and plans to close Helsinki-based Moonloot, which was founded in 2022. Just six weeks ago, Night School had released Unhinged, a novel 30-minute first-person horror game, which can be streamed on TVs to Netflix. users. The game was praised by Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on a call with investors, citing “really solid numbers.” Six weeks later, Night School closes. Prior to its time at Netflix, Night School had developed the award-winning supernatural thriller Oxenfree. A second Oxenfree game followed the purchase, as well as a mobile game designed to tie into an episode of the Netflix show Black Mirror. Netflix attributed the studio closures to a prioritization around children’s games, party games, story-based fare and games with conventional hooks, such as a recently released FIFA game. Internal games equipment. A representative declined to say how many jobs were being lost because of these cuts. “We are incredibly grateful to the talented colleagues we say goodbye to today. We thank them for all their contributions to Netflix and wish them the best,” the rep said. Netflix began releasing video games, initially on mobile devices as a free bonus for subscribers, in 2021. By 2023, Mike Verdu, then Netflix’s head of gaming operations, told me that the company was committed to growing carefully as it offered more games and built in-house game studios. At that time, it had not made any gaming job cuts. Netflix has since modified its approach. In 2024, Team Blue, a startup studio run by former Call of Duty and Halo developers that was exploring the possibility of creating a high-end first-person game for the service, closed. Last October, Netflix shuttered another studio, Boss Fight, shortly after Peters praised the team’s Squid Game to investors. (One of Boss Fight’s main developers is now working on Netflix’s FIFA game for third-party studio Delphi.) And in December, Netflix sold cozy game studio Spry Fox to its founders. Amid all this, Netflix has shifted from emphasizing mobile gaming to offering games through TVs and PCs, over streamed connections, with phones used as controllers. That’s how Night School’s Unhinged performed, along with games like Boggle and Party Crashers that together have helped Netflix’s game controller app do well in mobile app stores. The studio cuts leave Netflix with a core games team working with outside developers and a dedicated in-house studio in Helsinki-based Next Games, which produced many of the company’s couch-centric party games. produced externally. The company has few of its own film and television production studios. The gaming industry as a whole is seeing cuts to large multi-studio owners, with Sony, Ubisoft, Embracer, Microsoft and other giants closing or selling studios. Cuts at California-based studios, where costs are typically relatively high, have been particularly sharp. Netflix has faced skepticism about its gaming plans for years. Today’s moves are likely to fuel them, and the company has few upcoming projects to counter the narrative. Among the few hints, acclaimed indie studio Don’t Nod said last year that it was working on a game tied to a major Netflix franchise. “Gaming continues to be an opportunity for us to expand the variety of entertainment we offer to Netflix members,” the Netflix representative told Game File.
