Netflix Acquires Its Third Game Studio, Boss Fight Entertainment

Netflix has snapped up another independent game studio: The streamer announced that is has acquired Boss Fight Entertainment, a Texas-based mobile game developer.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Boss Fight was formed by former Zynga Dallas and Ensemble Studios employees in 2013. It’s headed by CEO David Rippy alongside CCO Bill Jackson and COO Scott Winsett.

“This studio’s extensive experience building hit games across genres will help accelerate our ability to provide Netflix members with great games wherever they want to play them,” Amir Rahimi, Netflix’s VP of game studios, said in announcing the deal.

Boss Fights joins Netflix’s two other game studio acquisitions: Night School Studio, best known for its supernatural mystery adventure title “Oxenfree,” and Next Games, a mobile games developer based in Finland, whose titles include story-driven puzzle game “Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales” and two based on hit zombie series “The Walking Dead.”

Boss Fight will continue to operate out of its current studios in Allen, Texas (in the Dallas area), Austin and Seattle. According to Rahimi, that also will let Netflix “tap into great creative talent beyond California.”

The one game listed on Boss Fight’s website is Dungeon Boss (pictured above), a mobile role-playing game in which players battle “to be the Boss.” In the game, you collect and build “teams of powerful heroes, upgrade their unique abilities to battle epic bosses, and defend your Dungeon from raids!” per the game’s description.

“Boss Fight’s mission is to bring simple, beautiful, and fun game experiences to our players wherever they want to play,” the founders of Boss Fight Entertainment said in a statement. “Netflix’s commitment to offer ad-free games as part of members’ subscriptions enables game developers like us to focus on creating delightful game play without worrying about monetization. We couldn’t be more excited to join Netflix at this early stage as we continue doing what we love to do while helping to shape the future of games on Netflix together.”

To date, Netflix has released 16 games, available in its app for iOS and Android, including two titled tied to “Stranger Things.” Later this month, the company plans to debut “Into the Dead 2: Unleashed,” its first first-person shooter, which plunks players into the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

Netflix’s theory is that the games — offered at no additional charge — will enhance the value of its core streaming-video business, and help it attract and retain subscribers in a heavily competitive market.

“We’re still in the early days of building great game experiences as part of your Netflix membership,” Rahimi said. “Through partnerships with developers around the world, hiring top talent, and acquisitions like this, we hope to build a world-class games studio capable of bringing a wide variety of delightful and deeply engaging original games — with no ads and no in-app purchases — to our hundreds of millions of members around the world.”

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