Netflix says it’s opening a video game studio in Finland as streamer tries to boost audience numbers

Netflix said Monday it will be opening an internal game studio in Finland.

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 about $72 million and has purchased three external game studios over the past year.

Netflix has a cache of over 20 mobile games available for download to subscribers, and the company plans to have 50 by year-end. The catalog includes “Stranger Things: 1984” and “Queen’s Gambit Chess,” which are based on Netflix series.

The streamer’s foray into gaming is in its early stages, but, as of August, there weren’t many Netflix subscribers playing. Fewer than 1% of Netflix’s 220 million subscribers were engaging with the games daily, according to Apptopia.

Netflix didn’t immediately respond to a question about its game engagement.

The streamer, which has lost overall subscribers during recent quarters, touted the internal 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 much more work to do to deliver a great games experience on Netflix,” Amir Rahimi, the company 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 games studios in our first year.”

The company said that its games will have no ads and no in-app purchases. Currently users can see the games offered within the Netflix app, but the games themselves download as individual apps.