All these massive, multi-billion dollar acquisitions are getting a bit scary, aren’t they? The one on everyone’s minds at the moment is of course Netflix’s proposed takeover of movie studio giant Warner Bros, offering up a cool $82.7 billion in exchange. This, of course, has an indescribably massive potential to ruin mainstream cinema, but we won’t get into that right this second, because there’s another concern: how much the streamer does not seem to care about the games side of Warner Bros.
When asked about Warner Bros’ games arm in a recent Netflix investors call (thanks, Pocket Gamer), and whether the Warner Bros “assets enhance or accelerate the success in the gaming side,” co-CEO Gregory Peters said that it does, with a caveat. “While they definitely have been doing some great work in the game space, we actually didn’t attribute any value to that from the get-go because they’re relatively minor compared to the grand scheme of things,” Peters explained.
“Now we’re super excited because some of those properties that they’ve built, Hogwarts is a great example of that, have done quite well, and we think that we can incorporate that into what we’re offering. They’ve got great studios and great folks working there. So we think that there’s definitely an opportunity there. But just to be clear, we haven’t built that into our deal model.”
Warner Bros haven’t exactly been doing great broadly speaking with games in recent times. Earlier this year they outright closed Monolith, developer of F.E.A.R. and Shadow of Mordor, cancelling the studio’s Wonder Woman game in the process. Plus there were the flops that were Suicide Squad and MultiVersus.
Netflix haven’t exactly smashed it on the games side either, having recently sold Spirit Crossing studio Spry Fox back to its owners, and laying staff off at Oxenfree developer Night School Studio earlier this year. And there’s been no obvious breakout hits that aren’t based on previously existing series.
This leaves a lot of room for concern over how Netflix may handle all of these new properties. Will it be the games companies Warner Bros own that get hit with the inevitable layoffs that come from massive acquisitions? Will these developers be forced into making Stranger Things and Squid Game adaptations, and whatever show trends next, ad infinitum?
These questions won’t be answered for years yet, let’s not forget how long Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard took, not to mention the anti-trust process it went through. Perhaps we should cross our fingers for the individual developers involved, come what may.
