Picture: SpryFox
Since its Netflix acquisition back in October 2022, SpryFox has been quietly working on its big social mobile game experience for Netflix, Spirit Crossing, which was officially unveiled earlier this year. According to a new report from Stephen Totilo of Game File, the studio is no longer under Netflix’s banner, having been sold back to the founders and going independent. However, Netflix is still tied in and plans to release the game fully, plus we might see it jump to other platforms too.
Their new game, titled Spirit Crossing, was officially unveiled this year at GDC as an ambitious MMO social simulation and is now available to download in its currently early access alpha playtest state. It currently has over 100K downloads on the Google Play Store with the beta launch reportedly set for 2026.
It was developed under the codename of Project Friendship with the official description reading, “Journey to a land between worlds in Spirit Crossing: a cooperative village life sim designed to foster friendship, kindness, and community.”
While the game is still intended to remain with Netflix, Game File’s report suggests the studio may need additional funding and partners to keep operations going.
While Netflix has several other internal game teams, it has lost several of the initial acquisitions and buildout spree from the early days. There was the famous instance of Team Blue, a big, ambitious studio in California, although what project they were working on is unclear. Earlier this year, we saw Boss Fight, which had helmed Netflix Stories and Squid Game: Unleashed, close down entirely, with one of its original projects, Dungeon Boss: Respawned, recently shuttering entirely.
One of the last remaining studios from the early acquisitions is Next Games, based in Finland. They had one of their games, Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales (which was ported to Netflix after initially being a free-to-play game), shut down and removed from the library, although they still seem to be core to the current output of the division, with them producing many of the social TV games that just launched recently even holding a presentation for select journalists alongside a presentation in Los Angeles. The other major acquisition, Night School Studios, delivered OXENFREE II, although what they’re working on next is unclear.
Netflix also has a number of internal teams with codenames, plus MoonLoot Games, also based in Helsinki and established under Netflix from get-go, that’s actively hiring, with only some minor details about one of their games out there.
Netflix’s entry into games has long been documented with the ups (and many downs) with their intial broad splash into mobile games having seen a significant pullback with major titles removed and planned releases scrapped entirely. Its next exodus of games is scheduled throughout December with over a dozen games set to leave.
