GAMES: Netflix acquires the studio that created its “Stranger Things” mobile game.

Net­flix today announced the acqui­si­tion of Next Games, a Finnish mobile game devel­op­er that pre­vi­ous­ly made an RPG based on Stranger Things. The deal will see Net­flix hand over around €65 mil­lion (about $72 mil­lion), with all doc­u­ments to be finalised by the sum­mer. Next Games has plen­ty of expe­ri­ence in the TV mar­ket and pre­vi­ous­ly cre­at­ed The Walk­ing Dead: Our World, which was updat­ed in sync with the (in)famous zom­bie show.

As Michael Ver­du, vice pres­i­dent of games at Net­flix, explained, Next Games will become a “core stu­dio”, “expand­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of our in-house game stu­dio”. This is very much in line with Net­flix’s strat­e­gy to expand what it can offer users beyond pres­tige TV minis­eries that reg­u­lar­ly run 2–3 hours longer than they should.

 In addi­tion to titles from Stranger Things and The Dark Crys­tal: Age of Resis­tance, Net­flix has also launched a Hearth­stone-like card game called Arca­ni­um: Rise of Akhan and Krispee Street. Not to men­tion its ‘inter­ac­tive fic­tion’ projects like Ban­der­snatch and the recent­ly released Cat Burglar.