Netflix’s gaming “secret weapon” is no more

The hope that Netflix might produce something more than snackable sports or party games has vanished with today’s revelation that Oxenfree studio Night School is to close.

It was only a handful of weeks ago Night School released the inventive horror game Unhinged, starring Zo?? Kravitz and Sadie Sink, which cleverly paired phones and TV screens to create a short but striking experience.

In an article for Eurogamer, Matt said Unhinged offered “the kind of entertaining interactive narrative experiment I hoped we might see from Netflix when it first announced it was getting into games”. Furthermore, he wrote: “If Unhinged is any indication, Night School could, if given more opportunities, be Netflix’s secret weapon.”

Sadly, that’s no longer to be, as Netflix told Game File overnight that it was closing Night School Studio along with one other studio, Moonloot, that was reportedly working on an Animal Crossing-like game.

Netflix said it was doing so to prioritise games you probably ignore: kids games, party games, “story-driven fare” and “games with mainstream hooks”, wrote Game File. A Netflix spokesperson said: “We see an opportunity to be more focused in our execution, so we are making organisational changes to the business to match those priorities.”

The company is also cutting an unknown number of jobs from its internal games team. “We are incredibly grateful to the talented colleagues we’re saying goodbye to today. We thank them for all their contributions to Netflix, and wish them the best,” the spokesperson added.

Netflix bought Night School Studio in 2021, while the studio was working on Oxenfree 2, which would be released unscathed a couple of years later, and cement the studio’s walk-and-talk, gentle horror game credentials. After that, presumably at Netflix’s instruction, the studio’s output changed, with its next game being a Black Mirror companion experience called Thronglets, which was actually quite good.

Thronglets realised the game idea from an episode of Black Mirror which obsessed the characters in it and to horrifying effect – naturally, given the show’s predisposition for that kind of storyline. It blended a god-sim template with tamagotchi influences, and many fourth-wall breaking moments, to create an experience that genuinely carried the essence of Black Mirror in it. It was encouraging to see.

These closures are the latest in a string of Netflix gaming reductions as it changes course from what looked like a big push into making games a few years ago. There were triple-A gaming aspirations at a studio led by a former Halo creative director that were axed in 2024, and then Squid Game game-maker Boss Fight was closed in October 2025, and cosy online-game maker Spry Fox was sold back to its founders a couple of months later.

Netflix also partnered with Monument Valley maker Ustwo games to exclusively release Monument Valley 3, which struggled to find an audience and was later removed from Netflix, alongside many other more traditional games. Ustwo is now pushing back into being a PC-first developer.

“Games continue to be an opportunity for us to expand the variety of entertainment we offer Netflix members,” the Netflix spokesperson told Game File, but with operations reduced to party game-maker Next Games, and with an altered outlook, it seems unlikely those games will appeal in the way a studio like Night School’s games did.