Netflix sticks with games, Humble Games closure confusion and Monster Hunter Now levels up | Week in Views

• The PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week

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The games industry moves quickly and while stories may come and go there are some that we just can’t let go of…

So, to give those particularly thorny topics a further going over we’ve created a weekly digest where the members of the PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week.

New president, new titles, aggressive goals: Netflix sticks with games

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Netflix hasn’t messed around with the messaging on its games division this week: it’s not going anywhere, apparently.

It brought in an experienced industry executive in Alain Tascan, formerly Epic Games VP of development, as its president of games. (Spare a thought for previous top dog Mike Verdu, who was merely VP).

Meanwhile in a recent call with investors, co-CEOs Gregory Peters and Theodore Sarandoswere were keen to convince that Netflix is in games for the long-term. After three years, they still have “even more aggressive growth goals” for 2025 and 2026.

It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Peters was honest enough to admit that the levels of engagement and the impact on its overall business is “still quite small”. 

While he said last year the streaming firm had tripled engagement with games and 2024 was “looking good” for growth, it’s worth noting no exact figures have been shared, so we don’t really know how well, or badly, Netflix is doing on this front.

If it was going gangbusters, Netflix would be shouting about the stats like it now does its film and TV content – 2023 saw subscribers watch 183 billion hours of Netflix content.

Peters also discussed the relatively small investment in its games business compared to overall spend. Curiously, he said Netflix has “calibrated the growth in investment with the growth in the business impact” and is “being disciplined about how we scale that”. Does that mean Netflix will invest less on games until the division starts making a real impact?

Either way, there are still more than 80 games said to be in development for Netflix right now (on top of the 100+ titles it already has), though plans to only release at least one per month. For some context, the company’s last H2 2023 report into film and TV viewership figures had data on nearly 16,000 titles.

I’m curious to see how Netflix’s games strategy plays out over the next year and whether there will be a change in direction. It’s interesting that it appears set on interactive fiction, which appears to be back in vogue despite old leaders Episode and Choices being past their best.  Netflix Stories director of story Sarah Springwater recently told us how the streaming giant is using interactive fiction to engage with fans of its shows – and also bring in new ones.

Netflix Games has been given a second chance. Time will tell if it continues that patience.

Humble Games denies shutting down after reportedly laying off all staff

The long and continuous stream of layoffs throughout the games industry is tough, and I’m sure those making these decisions aren’t doing so lightly. However, when this does happen, the very least that you should expect is a clear message and some thought for those who just lost their jobs.

That’s not really what happened with Humble Games’ layoffs this week when it announced that the difficult decision to restructure operations had been made. 

The entire team of 36 was laid off, with some taking to social media to share the bad news; others quickly responded to the statement, too, with former Humble Bundle creative lead Chris Radley taking to LinkedIn to say this clearly wasn’t a restructure and that this was a “failure of leadership”. 

The remaining projects are to be finished by consultancy firm The Powell Group. However, there’s still confusion around whether this is a restructure, as initially stated, or something closer to that of shutting down once current projects are wrapped up.

We’ll continue to look at the situation and what becomes of it, but layoffs are hard enough as it is, and how this has been handled feels like adding insult to injury. 

Monster Hunter Now’s Dimensional Links show a conscious effort to include rural players

Monster Hunter Now has levelled up its multiplayer with new Dimensional Link monsters, connected between players globally and enabling online hunts outside of limited Hunt-a-thons.

It’s a huge win for rural players giving them access to multiplayer features on a whole new scale, and embodies the Monster Hunter Now team’s efforts to make the game as fun and accessible as possible, wherever you are.

The studio is actually entirely separate to Pokémon Go’s dev team, and has arguably shown much more consideration for rural players than its older AR sibling, actively listening to player feedback and implementing changes where possible.

Oh, and there’s a MrBeast collab coming too.