Netflix has made its plans for expanding its presence in gaming abundantly clear, and the last couple of years have seen the media giant taking concrete steps to that end, from the launch of the Netflix Games platform as part of the regular subscription to acquiring Oxenfree developer Night School Studio. Now, the company’s taken another significant step forward.
Netflix has announced that it’s establishing its own internal game development studio (the company previously made it clear that it had no intentions of going on an acquisition spree like many others in the industry have done). The studio will be based in Helsinki, Finland, and will be led by former Zynga vice president Marko Lastikka.
Netflix says it picked Helsinki as the location for the studio because it is “home to some of the best game talent in the world”. Another Netflix-owned studio, Next Games, is also based in Helsinki.
“This is another step in our vision to build a world-class games studio that will bring a variety of delightful and deeply engaging original games — with no ads and no in-app purchases — to our hundreds of millions of members around the world,” Netflix’s VP of game studios Amir Rahimi writes.
He concludes: “It’s still early days, and we have much more work to do to deliver a great games experience on Netflix. 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.”
