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Netflix may have finally figured out games
Column Close Column Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Column Gaming Close Gaming Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Gaming Streaming Close Streaming Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Streaming Netflix may have finally figured out games The new TV-based games feel right. by Andrew Webster Close Andrew Webster Senior entertainment editor Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Andrew Webster May 10, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC Link Share Gift Image: Lego Party Column Close Column Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Column Gaming Close Gaming Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Gaming Streaming Close Streaming Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Streaming Netflix may have finally figured out games The new TV-based games feel right. by Andrew Webster Close Andrew Webster Senior entertainment editor Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Andrew Webster May 10, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC Link Share Gift Andrew Webster Close Andrew Webster Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Andrew Webster is an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories. This is The Stepback , a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on Netflix, follow Andrew Webster . The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here . How it started Boggle has become a spectator sport in my household. Everyone crowds around the TV while one of us plays, and the crowd either helps shout out words or waits patiently for their turn. There’s a lot of yelling. But it’s a game that my family can hop into easily, and once someone starts playing, it seems everyone slowly drifts into the room to join in. The surprising part is that the experience is happening entirely through Netflix. The streaming giant has been trying to crack gaming for half a decade now, and outside of a few rare hits like Grand Theft Auto and Squid Game: Unleashed , it hasn’t made much of a dent. But with its relatively new TV games , which launched last year and include the likes of Boggle as well as party games based on everything from Lego to Knives Out , Netflix may have finally figured out gaming that makes sense for the service. You don’t even need controllers: Each player just uses their own smartphone. As Netflix continues to expand beyond traditional TV and movie offerings, getting into everything from live sports to talent competitions with audience interaction , these kinds of games could eventually become a pillar of the service. And it all starts with Boggle . How it’s going It’s been a rough road to this point. Netflix first started rolling out games in 2021, and initially, it seemed like a great deal. Games are included as part of a regular subscription, and at first the service offered a nicely curated selection of mobile games. There were ports of beloved indie titles like the sci-fi strategy game Into the Breach , as well as exclusive titles like the exhilarating adventure Laya’s Horizon . These sat alongside games based on Netflix shows like The Queen’s Gambit and Love Is Blind . If you were looking for high-quality games for your phone, Netflix was a surprisingly great platform. The problem is that few people seemed to notice — early reports suggested that less than 1 percent of subscribers actually played games . This didn’t stop Netflix from trying. It invested heavily in the space, adding major games to the platform, acquiring developers, and at one point even trying to build a AAA level studio of its own . But there was no consistency, and the strategy shifted constantly. For instance, last year Netflix’s president of games Alain Tascan outlined four key pillars that would define the company’s gaming efforts , telling me that “we need to find our voice.” But there have been changes even since then. Two of the games highlighted during that event in 2025 were the battle royale Squid Game: Unleashed and the upcoming cozy MMO Spirit Crossing ; since then Netflix shut down the studio behind Unleashed and Spirit Crossing developer Spry Fox bought itself out from Netflix in order to go independent . The streamer has thrown a lot of money at the gaming problem, but has mostly met with failure. That AAA studio shut down before it ever even released a game .
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