Netflix appears to have decided to shut down the game development studio Boss Fight Entertainment, according to LinkedIn posts by multiple Boss Fight Entertainment employees.
Netflix acquired it in 2022Boss Fight Entertainment, which subsequently developedSquidward: Liberation (Squid Game: Unleashed), and the interactive narrative game Netflix Stories.
Boss Fight Entertainment was founded in 2013 by members of Zynga's Dallas studio, which previously created "CastleVille", and members of Ensemble Studios, which previously assisted Microsoft in creating "Age of Empires". Its famous work is the mobile game "Dungeon Boss" launched in August 2015.
The mobile game "Squid Games" performed well, but the decision to shut it down caused surprise
The news of the closure was relatively unexpected, mainly because the market performance of Squidward: Liberation was quite good.Mobilegamer website reportThis mobile game, which was launched in conjunction with the second season of the TV series, has been downloaded over 1000 million times on the Google Play Store alone.
Recently, this game has just undergone a major software update to coincide with the launch of the third season of the series.
Employees express regret that undisclosed projects may be buried
Several designers at the studio have publicly expressed regret, suggesting that many future developments will not be seen.LinkedIn"It's infuriating to think of all the things that were quietly canceled behind the scenes that the world will never get to see," he wrote.
Boss Fight Entertainment has approximately 80 employees, and it is unclear whether these employees will be laid off directly or reassigned to other teams in Netflix's gaming division.
Closing the second studio within a year
This is the second game development studio Netflix has closed in the past year.
Prior to this, Netflix had closed its Los Angeles-based AAA game studio Team Blue, which had attracted developers from well-known companies such as Blizzard, Bungie, and Sony Santa Monica Studio, but was eventually disbanded without the outside world knowing what projects it was developing.
The news of the closure of Boss Fight Entertainment has undoubtedly raised more questions about Netflix's long-term strategy in the gaming field.
