➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Netflix buys another game developer

• 🦊 Netflix has acquired another gaming studio, Spry Fox

• 🐻 The developer has created games like Triple Town, Alphabear and Cozy Grove

• 💪 Netflix is committed to building its in-house creative capacity

• 😖 In August, it was revealed less than 1% of Netflix subscribers play its games

Netflix has acquired another game developer, and this time it’s the studio behind hit life-sim Cozy Grove, Spry Fox.

Spry Fox becomes Netflix sixth in-house game studio, and has previously developed titles such as Triple Town, Alphabear, and the aforementioned Cozy Grove.

In a blog post on Netflix’s website, VP of games studios Amir Rahimi said the acquisition of Spry Fox will “help accelerate our creative development in another beloved genre and add to the growing variety of Netflix’s games catalog that will have something for everyone.”

Co-founder of Spry Fox Daniel Cook said the team is “excited about joining Netflix as an in-house game studio and building amazing games together”, and co-founder David Edery wrote on the company’s website that the takeover will let the studio “continue making the games that we were already making and wanted to make, but with more support and resources to make those games better and bring them to more people around the world.”

Spry Fox is already working on Cozy Grove 2, which will be “a larger, non-violent MMO”, according to Edery.

Rahimi said that Spry Fox is a studio whose values align closely with Netflix’s “relentless focus on employee and player joy”, and noted that he was “proud of the foundational work we’ve been doing to build out our in-house creative capacity so that we can deliver the best possible games experience — including no ads and no in-app purchases — to our members as part of their membership.”

While the purchase of Spry Fox isn’t likely to get tongues wagging like Microsoft’s pending $69 billion takeover of Actvision Blizzard — which Microsoft CEO of Gaming is confident will go through — the move shows that Netflix remains committed to its gaming vision.

However, the streaming giant has a long way to go if it wants to make an impact in the video games market. It was revealed in August that less than 1% of Netflix’s 221 million subscribers have tried the service’s mobile games, even though they’re free.

Netflix is aiming to double the number of games it has available, and hopes to have 50 titles for subscribers to play by the end of this year.

Here’s a current list of all the Netflix games you can play right now. Expect the likes of Cozy Grove and other Spry Fox titles to be added in due course.

• Arcanium: Rise of Akhan

• Asphalt Xtreme

• Before Your Eyes

• Bowling Ballers

• Card Blast

• Desta: the Memories Between

• Dominoes Café

• Dungeon Dwarves

• Dragon Up

• Exploding Kittens

• Heads Up!

• Hextech Mayhem Netflix Edition

• Into the Breach

• Into the Dead 2: Unleashed

• Knittens

• Krispee Street

• Lucky Luna

• Mahjong Solitaire

• Moonlighter

• Nailed It! Baking Bash

• Oxenfree: Netflix Edition

• Poinpy

• Relic Hunters: Rebels

• Shatter Remastered

• Shooting Hoops

• Spiritfarer

• SpongeBob: Squarepants Get Cooking!

• Stranger Things: 1984

• Stranger Things 3: The Game

• Teeter (Up)

• This is a True Story

• Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt

• Wild Things: Animal Adventures

• Wonderputt Forever

In other streamer-related news, Netflix is about to launch ‘Netflix Basic with Ads’ on November 3, which costs $6.99 a month. A Netflix spokesperson told us that the Basic with Ads plan will include 85% to 95% of the content available to premium subscribers.