Netflix has shut down Boss Fight Entertainment, the video game production studio that it acquired in 2022, a source familiar with the matter confirms to The Hollywood Reporter.
Boss Fight was the game studio behind last year’s Squid Game: Unleashed, a mobile game meant to bring a flagship piece of Netflix intellectual property to its nascent gaming ambitions. Boss Fight also worked on its Netflix Stories games, which also took IP and adapted them into interactive entertainment. Both Stories and Squid Game: Unleashed will continue to be available for members to play.
The decision to shutter Boss Fight comes as Netflix games chief Alain Tascan, who joined the company last year, seeks to pivot the company’s gaming focus toward party games, narrative games, kids games and mainstream games, with a heavier focus on gaming on TV screens rather than on mobile devices.
Earlier this month Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters announced a slate of party games for the platform, including adaptations of Boggle and Pictionary, a sign of a change in strategy.
Still, the decision shutter Boss Fight is the clearest signal yet that the company is still not happy with where its games division is. Netflix is normally reluctant to engage in heavy M&A, but in 2021 and 2022 bought three studios, including Boss Fight, to try and grow that business. But with so much user engagement on TV screens, the mobile focus of the first batch of games appears to have been mismatched with the rest of the product.
