Netflix gift cards are seen at a store in Krakow, Poland on June 13, 2022.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
netflix announced on Monday that it would open an in-house game studio in Finland.
It’s the company’s first push into in-house game development since the streaming giant entered the mobile gaming space in November 2021. The company has already purchased three external game studios over the course of the year. past year. Netflix bought Next Games, also based in Finland, for around $72 million.
Netflix already has a cache of over 20 mobile games available for Netflix subscribers to download, and the company plans to have 50 by the end of the year. The catalog includes “Stranger Things: 1984” and “Queen’s Gambit Chess”, which are based on the Netflix series.
The streamer’s foray into gaming is in its early stages, but as of August few Netflix subscribers were playing. Less than 1% of Netflix’s 220 million subscribers interact with games daily, according to Apptopia. Netflix did not immediately respond to a question about its involvement in the game.
The company, which has lost all of its subscribers in recent quarters, pitched the newly announced studio as a place where Netflix could develop games in-house alongside its existing subsidiary studios, which also include Night School Studio and Boss Fight Entertainment.
“It’s still early days, and we still have a lot of work to do to deliver a great gaming experience on Netflix,” read a statement from Game Studios Netflix Vice President Amir Rahimi. “Making a game can take years, so I’m proud to see how we’re steadily building the foundations of our game studios in our first year.”
The company said its games will not have ads or in-app purchases. Currently, users can see the games offered in the Netflix app, but the games themselves download as individual apps.