Netflix acquires avatar creator for game Ready Player Me

After change his style of play to focus on the game that plays on TV, Netflix announced that it is acquiring Ready Player Me, an avatar creation platform from Estonia. The publisher said on Friday that it plans to use its original development tools and architecture to create avatars that will allow Netflix subscribers to transport their characters and fandom across different games.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed; Ready Player Me earned $72 million instead of being backed by investors including a16z, Endeavor, Konvoy Ventures, Plural, and various angels, including co-founders of companies such as Roblox, Twitch, and King Games.

Netflix told TechCrunch that a founding team of about 20 people will join the company, including founders Rainer Selvet, Haver Jarveoja, Kaspar Tiri, and Timmu Toke. It has no estimate of how long it will take until the avatars are launched. It also doesn’t say in detail which games or game types will be the first to get avatars.

Following the adoption, Ready Player Me will end its operations on January 31, 2026, including its online avatar creation tool, PlayerZero.

“Our vision has always been to make avatars and identities flow across games and around the world,” Ready Player Me CEO Timmu Toke said in a statement. “We’ve been on an independent path to making this vision a reality for a long time. Now I’m thrilled that the Ready Player Me team is joining Netflix to extend our expertise and experience to audiences around the world and support Netflix’s exciting vision for gaming.”

Netflix game changer

The Netflix deal represents a game changer for the company.

When it moved to the market four years ago, the company offered mobile games to its subscribers, who could access them using their Netflix accounts. At that time, Netflix explained that it saw games as another new category, similar to its expansion into original films, animation, and unscripted television.

Netflix acquired many game studios and titles, and licensed others, led by Mike Verdu, the company’s VP of games who previously worked at EA and Kabam. This approach had the opposite effect. While his big, well-known titles may have attracted some customers, such as GTA: San Andreas, others were unknown. (The company said recently GTA games were coming outtoo, along with many other names.)

Netflix also to close on the ground more about his studio purchases or he gave it back to those who started it.

On the other hand, these changes could have been expected. Going into this, Netflix knew to move games can be triedand it had to change when it found what worked and what didn’t.

As part of its transformation, Netflix last year brought new CEO, Alain Tascan, formerly of Epic Games, as their President of Games. Verdu, then VP of generative AI for games, he left after seven months.

Under Tascan, Netflix has expanded his television series and began to focus on party games, children’s games, narrative games, and many popular themes.

Recently, the streamer was released party games for TVs and phones, including Netflix Puzzled, PAW Patrol Academy, plus WWE2K25, Red Dead Redemptionand Best Guess, the live party game with directors Hunter March and Howie Mandel, and a $1 million jackpot. This week, that too announced the new FIFA title will come to television in time for the World Cup in 2026.

At the TechCrunch Disrupt event this October, Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone said the company was introducing real-time voting for live events, which was already experimenting with a cooking show and will soon launch the talent show “Star Search.”

In this way, Netflix is ​​now closely following the TV industry’s embrace of mobile, interactive experiences by allowing viewers to vote for “American Idol” contestants or their favorite couples on reality shows like “Love Island.”

Whether Netflix can convince its audience to think of its brand — traditionally about watching, not looking back — as something to turn to and engage in as a game, remains to be seen.