Today Netflix, ubiquitous in the realm of TV and film but known mostly in the video game industry for shutting down studios, took the hatchet to two more.
One, the Helsinki-based Moonloot, hadn’t released anything, but the other, Night School, created the beloved Oxenfree narrative adventure series, as well as comedic outdrink-the-devil simulator Afterparty, a Black Mirror mobile tie-in and, most recently, Unhinged, a first-person horror game streamable on Netflix that came out just six weeks ago.
Laid-off employees took to LinkedIn and Bluesky to lament their unceremonious fates.
"Despite directing Unhinged and shipping it 6 weeks ago to millions of excited, satisfied players, it looks like I'm back on the market (along with the rest of Night School Studio)," wrote Night School game director Sam Warner.
"So, who’s hiring?" wrote Netflix games senior accessibility producer Tara Voelker. "Yes, I was impacted by the Netflix layoffs even though I was the single accessibility person in gaming."
In a statement to Game File about the closures, a Netflix spokesperson said that the company is also making cuts to its internal games team. However:
“We see an opportunity to be more focused in our execution, so we are making organizational changes to the business to match those priorities,” the spokesperson told Game File.
According to Game File, Netflix attributed the cuts specifically to “a prioritization around kids gaming, party games, story-driven fare and games with mainstream hooks, such as a recently released FIFA game.”
Earlier this month, the studio responsible for the aforementioned FIFA game, Refactor, laid off 85 percent of its workforce. This immediately after Netflix’s CEO praised the game. Netflix does not own Refactor, but its shepherding of other studios hasn’t exactly inspired confidence. In 2024, it shut down an internal studio headed up by a former Overwatch producer that also managed to attract Halo’s former creative lead and God of War’s art director. Nothing publicly playable came of their efforts. In 2025, Netflix shut down Squid Game: Unleashed developer Boss Fight Entertainment, which—sensing a pattern here—it hyped up to investors just before doing so. Late last year, Netflix also sold Cozy Grove and Spirit Crossing studio Spry Fox back to its founders.
As Game File notes, this now leaves Netflix with just an internal gaming team that works with other developers and one first-party studio, Next Games, which has made games like Netflix Minigolf, Netflix Puzzled, Boggle Party, and others of that nature.
Despite all this, Netflix said in a July 2026 earnings report that it’s only “scratching the surface” when it comes to games—just as it did in April 2026, January 2026, October 2025, and January 2025. The problem with some surfaces is, if you scratch at them for long enough, they start to bleed.
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Luke Plunkett
