The company’s Southern California game studio, one of a handful of internal studios assembled by Netflix in recent years as part of its expansion in

Netflix shuts down AAA “Team Blue” SoCal gaming studio

submited by

Style Pass

2024-10-22 17:00:07

The company’s Southern California game studio, one of a handful of internal studios assembled by Netflix in recent years as part of its expansion into video games, has been shut down, Game File has learned.

The studio, also known as team “Blue,” seemed poised to break the mold of what Netflix is doing in gaming. Early hints about the team’s work suggested it was pursuing a big-budget multi-device strategy, signifying the ambitious edge of Netflix’s initial mobile-focused expansion.

In late 2022, Netflix wooed Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny from Blizzard to build its SoCal studio. (Sonny had stints on Call of Duty and Sony Santa Monica before that).

In spring 2023, Netflix’s SoCal studio added Joseph Staten, a longtime creative lead on Microsoft’s Halo franchise at Bungie and 343 Industries. Staten was exiting the Xbox camp for Netflix to work “as creative director for a brand-new AAA multiplatform game and original IP,” he said at the time. That move was widely covered in the gaming press, a sign that Netflix was very serious about this gaming thing.

That same spring, Team Blue also recruited art director Rafael Grassetti, who had nearly a decade of experience at Sony Santa Monica where he’d most recently been the God of War studio’s overall art director.