Netflix Shutting Down 2 Studios - Oxenfree Dev Night School and Moonloot - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 1 day ago / 5,525 Views
Netflix is shutting down two of its video game studios and laying off employees at other studios, according to a report from Game File. Oxenfree developer Night School, as well as Moonloot will be closing down.
Night School was acquired in 2021 and just six weeks ago released the short first-person horror game, Unhinged, that is playable to Netflix users. Moonloot is based in Helsinki and was founded in 2022.
"We see an opportunity to be more focused in our execution, so we are making organizational changes to the business to match those priorities," said a Netflix spokesperson.
Netflix is laying off staff at its internal games team, however, it isn't known how many will be let go.
"We are incredibly grateful to the talented colleagues we’re saying goodbye to today. We thank them for all their contributions to Netflix, and wish them the best."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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The culling will continue, unfortunately.
Netflix made incredibly stupid decisions ever since acquiring Night School. Firstly they never released Oxenfree 2 on Xbox when the first game was an Xbox timed console exclusive and likely had a fairly large audience on Xbox due to the timed exclusivity. Then if that wasn't dumb enough, they had them make an Android/iOS only horror game that was only available with a Netflix sub. Gee, I wonder why it flopped. Who is going to take the time to sign into Netflix on their phone to play a game on touch controls? I sure wouldn't.
As much as I dislike seeing studios being shut down, many of these developers are making very niche titles, probably with little to modest sales. These work well enough for independent studios, but for big companies that need to justify every action to their shareholders, they are an opportunity loss. Their publishers have to ponder if keeping these studios around is profitable in the long run, and more often than not, it is not.
Netflix makes games?
