A former Netflix game studio went indie to reach more players
TL;DR
Spry Fox, a cozy game studio acquired by Netflix in 2022, has gone independent again to reach more players, as it struggled with monetization under the partnership.
When Netflix first acquired cozy game developer Spry Fox in 2022, it made a lot of sense. The studio had been around for over a decade and had several hits with mobile games like Triple Town and Alphabear. That approachable style of puzzle game seemed like a good fit for Netflix's mobile-first strategy, and, as Spry Fox cofounder David Edery tells me, the partnership also meant that the team could focus on making the experiences they wanted to build without having to worry about monetization. "We just never were that good at making money from our games," Edery explains.
Now, three years later, Spry Fox is once again independent after buying …