Netflix Shuts Down Night School Studio and Moonloot, Narrowing Its Games Ambitions
Netflix is closing two more of its internal game studios: Night School Studio, the developer behind the supernatural adventure Oxenfree, and Moonloot, a Finnish studio founded in 2022 that was reportedly working on an Animal Crossing-style life sim. Netflix confirmed staff layoffs from its games team but did not disclose the number of jobs lost. VGC
Night School was the first studio Netflix acquired, picked up in 2021 as the streaming company began building a games library offered to subscribers at no extra cost, with no ads and no in-app purchases. The studio had released the critically acclaimed original Oxenfree in 2016. Under Netflix, it shipped Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals in 2023, a Black Mirror spin-off mobile game called Thronglets tied to the show's seventh season, and most recently Unhinged — an interactive horror game played through Netflix's cloud streaming service, where the player's phone becomes both the controller and the protagonist's in-game phone. VGC
Unhinged was released roughly six weeks before the closure was announced. VGC A Netflix Tudum page describes the game as a twisted first-person true-crime experience made by Night School for Netflix's own games division. Netflix Tudum
The timing is striking for another reason. In 2024, Carrie Patel — a director on Obsidian Entertainment's role-playing game Avowed — left that studio after 12 years to take on a directorial role at Night School for Netflix. VGC The studio was also home to the team that built the Oxenfree series into one of the more recognised names in narrative adventure games — story-driven titles where player choices shape the outcome.
These closures are not isolated. In October 2024, Netflix shut down Team Blue, a studio it had assembled by acquiring veteran developers, including former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny, Halo veteran Joseph Staten, and former Sony Santa Monica art director Raf Grassetti. All three reportedly left Netflix after that studio closed. VGC A month later, in November 2024, Netflix removed almost all of its interactive specials — the choose-your-own-path episodes that had been an early bridge between the company's video streaming and games ambitions. VGC
A Netflix spokesperson told Game File that the company is now focusing more on party games, story-driven games, games aimed at children, and titles with broader mainstream appeal, including a recent FIFA World Cup game. VGC
For a company that entered gaming in 2021 with a string of studio acquisitions, the pattern is now clear: Netflix is pulling back from the experimental and the big-budget, and concentrating on games it believes will reach the widest possible audience. Whether that narrower focus succeeds is a question for the next round of releases.
