Netflix said on Monday it will open an in-house game studio in Finland as the streamer tries to boost viewership numbers.
The development marks the company’s first of its kind since the streaming giant entered the mobile gaming space in November 2021. It bought Finland-based Next Games for around $72 million and bought three studios from external games during the past year.
Netflix has a cache of more than 20 mobile games available for 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, there weren’t many Netflix subscribers playing the game. Less than 1% of Netflix’s 220 million subscribers were engaging with the games on a daily basis, according to Apptopia.
Netflix did not immediately respond to a question about its involvement with the game.
The streamer, which has been losing subscribers overall for the past few quarters, touted the in-house game studio as a place for Netflix to develop games alongside its existing subsidiary studios, which include Night School Studio and Boss Fight Entertainment.
“It’s still early days and we have a lot more work to do to deliver a great gaming experience on Netflix,” Amir Rahimi, the company’s vice president of game studios, said in a statement. “Creating a game can take years, so I’m proud to see how we’re steadily building the foundation of our game studios in our first year.”
The company said that its games will have no ads or in-app purchases. Currently, users can view the games offered in the Netflix app, but the games are downloaded as individual apps.
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