In another shake-up of its video games division, Netflix is shuttering the first studio it purchased, Oxenfree Night School, according to Stephen Totilo of Game file. Netflix acquired Night School Studio in 2021, and produced there Oxenfree II: lost signalsTHE Black mirror: Thrtabs application, and Disarticulateda smartphone-controlled horror game released about six weeks ago.
Netflix also reportedly plans to close Helsinki studio Moonloot Games, which the company founded in September 2022 to create original mobile titles. Additionally, it is cutting an undisclosed number of jobs from its internal games team. All this with the aim of prioritizing children’s games, board games, narrative experiences and mainstream titles like June’s. FIFA World Cup: Launch Editionsaid a Netflix spokesperson Game file.
THE FIFA World Cup The game was developed by a third-party studio, Refactor Games, which laid off 85% of its staff in early August. The layoffs follow reports that Refactor’s parent company, Delphi Interactive, pulled funding following the game’s release.
In a real move of friction, Netflix co-CEO Gregory Peters praised the Night School game. Disarticulated And FIFA World Cup during the company’s second quarter 2026 earnings conference call on July 16.
“We have built a strong foundation and we are now seeing exciting positive signals that are helping to inform us and give us increased conviction about our future growth and the nature of that growth here,” Peters said just a few weeks ago. “So you mentioned the cloud-based strategy, these cloud-based game shows, we really think it works. FIFA And Disarticulated have become our top two most successful cloud games, really solid numbers that put it at the top of the gaming performance charts for us.
Night School co-founders Sean Krankel and Adam Hines were extremely optimistic about the Netflix acquisition when I spoke with them at Summer Game Fest 2023, just before Netflix’s release. Without oxen II. Netflix decided to start a video game company in 2021, and according to Krankel, that’s when executives wooed Night School’s founders with phrases like, “What can we do to stop your team from achieving your dreams?”
Netflix officially acquired Night School in September 2021. After the purchase, Night School hired more team members and moved into Netflix offices. In 2023, Krankel and Hines talked about how cool it is to be able to send remote workers when needed and make Without oxen II available in 32 languages from day one. The founders talked about how comfortable they felt at Netflix.
“Our big concern was the autonomy aspect,” Hines said at the time. “We’ve all worked at bigger studios before, and we just saw and felt how long it would take to make decisions, how the creatives would kind of be stifled by things because there were too many cooks in the kitchen. But talking to Netflix a lot before they joined, we felt really comfortable, just like we were speaking the same language about how to make games.”
Netflix has rapidly expanded its video game division between 2021 and 2024, acquiring a handful of teams, including Cozy Grove. creator Spry Fox and mobile developer Boss Fight Entertainment, and staffing an in-house AAA studio with veterans of the Overwatch, Halo and God of War franchises. Then, in 2024, Netflix hired former Epic Games executive Alain Tascan to run its games business, and everything changed.
With this week’s closure of Night School and Moonloot, Netflix has now closed or sold all but one of its studios. Spry Fox, at least, was able to redeem itself from Netflix and continues to make ambitious and adorable games. Netflix’s only survivors are Helsinki-based Next Games, which focuses on couch experiences, and Netflix Games Studio, which mainly signs deals with external developers.
This group seems to be growing stronger, with a multitude of streaming board games like Overcooked! All you can eat and Jackbox titles on Netflix in recent months.
