Netflix gift cards are on display at a store in Krakow, Poland on June 13, 2022.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurfoto | Getty Images
Netflix said Monday it will open an in-house game studio in Finland.
The development is 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 about $72 million and has bought three third-party game studios in the past year.
Netflix has a cache of 31 mobile games available for download to subscribers, 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 Netflix series.
The streamer’s quest for gaming is still in its infancy, but in August there weren’t many Netflix subscribers playing. According to Apptopia, less than 1% of Netflix’s 220 million subscribers were on the games daily.
Netflix declined to comment on the game engagement data.
The streamer, which has lost subscribers in recent quarters, touted the in-house game studio as a place for Netflix to develop games alongside its existing subsidiaries, including 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. “Making a game can take years, so I’m proud to see how we’re steadily laying the groundwork for our game studios in our first year.”
The company said its games will have no ads and no in-app purchases. Currently, users can see the games offered in the Netflix app, but download the games themselves as separate apps.