Netflix is ​​acquiring gaming avatar maker Ready Player Me

After changing its gaming strategy to focus more on games played on TV, Netflix announced that it has acquired Ready Player Me, an avatar creation platform based in Estonia. The streamer said Friday that it plans to use the startup’s development tools and infrastructure to create avatars that will allow Netflix subscribers to carry their personalities and fanbase across different games.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ready Player Me has raised $72 million in venture backing from investors including a16z, Endeavor, Konvoy Ventures, Plural, and several angels, including co-founders of companies like Roblox, Twitch, and King Games.

Netflix told TechCrunch that the startup’s team of about 20 people will join the company, including founders Rainer Selvet, Haver Jarveoja, Kaspar Tiri, and Timmu Toke. She has no estimate on how long it will take until the avatars are released. It also doesn’t include details on which games or game types will be the first to get avatars.

Following the acquisition, Ready Player Me will terminate its services on January 31, 2026, including its online avatar builder, PlayerZero.

“Our vision has always been to enable avatars and identities to travel across multiple games and virtual worlds,” Ready Player Me CEO Timo Tuck said in a statement. “We’ve been on an independent path to making this vision a reality for a long time. I’m now very excited to have the Ready Player Me team join Netflix to expand our technology and expertise to reach a global audience and contribute to the exciting vision Netflix brings to gaming.”

Netflix gaming transformation

The Netflix deal represents the company’s changing approach to gaming.

When it moved into the market four years ago, the company offered mobile games to its subscribers, who log in with their Netflix accounts. At the time, Netflix made clear that it viewed gaming as another new category, similar to its other expansions into original films, animation, and unscripted television.

Netflix has acquired several game studios and titles, and licensed others, under the leadership of Mike Verdoux, the company’s vice president of gaming who previously worked at EA and Kabam. That strategy saw mixed results. While some of its bigger, more popular titles may have attracted some customers, such as GTA: San Andreas, others were almost unknown. (The company recently said that GTA is on its way out, too, along with dozens of other games.)

Netflix has also closed several studio acquisitions or returned them to their founders.

To some extent, these changes were predictable. Going into this, Netflix knew that moving into gaming would be an experiment, and they would have to adapt as they discovered what worked and what didn’t.

As part of the strategic shift, Netflix last year hired a new CEO, Alain Tascan, who previously worked at Epic Games, as head of games. Verdo, who was then vice president of gaming AI, left after seven months.

Under Tascan, Netflix expanded its game lineup for television and began focusing on party games, kids’ games, narrative games, and more mainstream titles.

Recently, the streamer released a slate of party games for TVs and mobiles, including Netflix Puzzled and PAW Patrol Academy as well as WWE2K25, Red Dead Redemption and Best Guess, a live party game with hosts Hunter March and Howie Mandel, as well as a $1 million grand prize. It also announced this week that a new FIFA title will hit TV screens in time for the World Cup in 2026.

At a TechCrunch Disrupt event last October, Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone said the company was introducing real-time, interactive voting for live content, which it was already testing with a live cooking show and will soon reboot the talent show “Star Search.”

In this way, Netflix is ​​now closely following how the television industry has embraced mobile and interactive experiences by allowing audiences to vote for their favorite “American Idol” contestants or favorite couples on reality shows like “Love Island.”

Whether Netflix can convince its audience to think of its brand – traditionally associated with passive viewing – as something to turn to in interactive activities like gaming remains to be seen.