Netflix is closing Night School Studio, the California based developer behind the acclaimed supernatural adventure game Oxenfree, just six weeks after the studio released its final title, a short first person horror game called Unhinged that had been designed specifically to stream on Netflix’s platform. The closure follows a round of layoffs at the studio last year and comes as part of a broader restructuring of Netflix’s internal games division, with the company also planning to close Moonloot, a Helsinki based studio it founded in 2022, and cutting additional jobs from its internal games team without disclosing the exact number of positions affected.
Night School rose to prominence with Oxenfree, an award winning supernatural adventure known for its atmospheric setting, distinctive dialogue system and branching conversation mechanics that set it apart from many titles in the genre. The studio also released Afterparty, a graphic adventure game set in an imagined version of Hell, further establishing its reputation for narrative driven, stylistically distinctive projects. Netflix acquired the studio in September 2021 for an undisclosed sum, marking one of the streaming company’s earliest moves into owning game development talent outright rather than simply licensing existing titles for its subscribers. Under Netflix’s ownership, Night School went on to release Oxenfree II: Lost Signals as a sequel to its breakout title, and also developed a mobile game tied to an episode of the anthology series Black Mirror.
According to Netflix, the closure reflects a decision to concentrate its gaming efforts more narrowly on categories such as kids’ games, party games, story driven titles and projects with broader mainstream appeal, citing its recently released FIFA game as an example of the kind of title the company intends to prioritise going forward. A Netflix spokesperson said the company sees an opportunity to be more focused in its execution and is making organisational changes to match those priorities, while expressing gratitude to the departing colleagues for their contributions. The company has not clarified what will happen to the Oxenfree franchise going forward or whether another developer might eventually continue the series, meaning the closure of Night School does not necessarily signal the end of the intellectual property itself, even though the studio most closely associated with its creation is no longer operating.
The simultaneous closure of Moonloot further reduces Netflix’s internal development capacity, following the Helsinki studio’s founding in 2022 as part of an earlier push by the company to expand its gaming ambitions beyond simply licensing mobile titles for its subscriber base. Following these latest cuts, Netflix will retain a central games team that continues working with external developers alongside Next Games, its remaining Helsinki based first party studio, suggesting the company is increasingly shifting toward an external partnership model rather than maintaining a broad roster of in house development teams. The company previously closed Team Blue in 2024, a studio built from veterans of the Call of Duty and Halo franchises that had been working on a third person action role playing game for PC, and shut down Boss Fight Entertainment last October, alongside selling cosy game developer Spry Fox back to its original founders in December.
The closure of Night School is considered particularly notable within the gaming industry because it removes what had been Netflix’s most recognisable core gaming studio, one that had given the company an established creative identity in games through the strength of the Oxenfree franchise specifically. Netflix has faced ongoing scepticism about the long term viability of its gaming ambitions for several years, and the latest round of closures is likely to deepen those doubts given the company’s relatively limited slate of publicly known upcoming projects capable of countering that narrative. One notable exception is Life Is Strange developer Don’t Nod, which has confirmed it is currently working on a game based on a major Netflix franchise, representing one of the few concrete signs of forward momentum in Netflix’s gaming division following this latest contraction.
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