The former Netflix game studio has gone independent to reach more gamers

when Netflix first acquired cozy game developer Spry Fox in 2022It made a lot of sense. The studio has been around for over a decade and has had many successes in mobile games such as Triple Town and alphabet. This easy style of puzzle game seemed like a perfect fit for Netflix’s mobile-first strategy, and as Spry Fox co-founder David Eddery told me, the partnership also meant the team could focus on making the experiences they wanted to build without having to worry about monetization. “We’ve never been that good at making money from our games,” Eddery explains.

And now, three years later, Spry Fox became independent again After purchasing itself from Netflix. This news comes as the emerging gaming efforts shift to the streaming service Focus on TV games Unlike mobile addresses. Even the studios behind successful games, e.g Squid: Unleashed game, It was closed As part of the changes. But for Spry Fox, the decision to part ways with Netflix was made for a different reason: to reach the largest possible audience with the studio’s upcoming MMO. Soul crossing.

“At some point, I became increasingly concerned that the fact that the game was only for Netflix members was a real problem for it,” Edery explains. “It’s a very social game. People want to be able to play with their friends. If their friends aren’t Netflix members, it’s kind of a problem.”

Soul crossing It is a massively multiplayer game about fostering friendship and community in a fantastical and fantastic world. It’s the biggest experiment the studio has ever undertaken, but it also feels like a natural progression; After achieving success with those early portable titles, Spry Fox pushed into the so-called “cozy” genre with the Animal crossingSeries style Cozy Grove. While these games are single player, Soul crossing It aims to do something similar but in a virtual world filled with a lot of players. The goal is ambitious. “We really believe this is our opportunity to feel less alone in the world,” says Ederi. “This is the sum of everything we care about.”

Development on Soul crossing It predates the Netflix deal, and actually represents something of a brief history of indie game funding over the past few years. The game’s prototype began life as an exclusive to the Google Stadia streaming service. after High-profile Stadia explosionSpry Fox eventually retained ownership of the project Epic picked up the game As part of A relatively new publishing initiative.

“It was great because they were very supportive and gave us a great budget,” Ederi says of working with Epic. “Then the Netflix-type thing came out of nowhere. I wasn’t looking at an acquisition at the time, and I certainly didn’t think it would be Netflix of all companies, but they came along and it seemed like a good idea for a few different reasons.”

From the outside, Netflix’s gaming efforts looked chaotic. The company has tried everything Games based on their offers to Building a AAA studio Without much success. Last year at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Netflix’s head of gaming, Alan Taskan, has outlined a new plan He focused on specific types of games, including what he called “mainstream” titles aimed at large audiences, including Soul crossing It was shown as an example. but late, Netflix seems to be mostly focused on cloud gaming played on TVs rather than phones.

Despite all this, Ederi says the Spry Fox team hasn’t been greatly affected by Netflix’s changing priorities. “We were brought in mainly for manufacturing and launch Soul crossing“We just kept doing what we were doing,” he says, “so I think we were less affected by the changes than others might be internally.” “We had a very clear vision, and for better or worse, we were not going to be taken away from that.”

At every stage, from Stadia to Netflix, Ediri says, Soul crossing It has grown in scope and ambition. Eventually it became clear that a game built around connecting as many people as possible didn’t fit comfortably into Netflix’s plans, limiting the platforms the game could be played on. Ediri notes this Cozy Grovefor example, was most successful on the Nintendo Switch, where relaxing games are very popular. “Not being able to be on Switch is a real limitation, and maybe a really problematic one,” he says. Soul crossing.

So parting ways with Netflix was for the good of the game; While the Switch version has not been announced yet, Soul crossing It will come to PC as well as iPhone and Android. The partnership with Netflix is ​​still in place, as the mobile version will remain free and exclusive to subscribers. “Netflix still has to make sense,” Ederi points out. But there are clear risks involved in the process of independence, and the team has already begun to make sacrifices. Edery says he and fellow founder Daniel Cook have cut their salaries to $20,000 a year.

The majority of development is on Soul crossing It was completed during the three years that Spry Fox was under the Netflix umbrella, and the team expects to release the game this year. (You can currently register to play the alpha version of the game.) Even before that Soul crossing Post-launch, Spry Fox’s long journey back to independence represents a rare positive story in an industry plagued by layoffs, cancellations and studio closures. But there’s one big thing the team still has to do, and it’s something Ederi isn’t looking forward to: “We have to figure out how to make money now.”