Netflix reportedly shutters its AAA game studio, dismantling a team of former God of War, Overwatch, Halo, and Gears of War devs
Netflix has reportedly shut down its AAA game studio, despite recruiting a strong team of notable veteran developers with experience on God of War, Halo, and more over the last couple of years.
That’s according to a new report from Game File, which says that the studio – known as Team Blue – appeared to be pursuing some ambitious, multi-device and big-budget stuff behind the scenes. This would have been fuelled by a team full of experienced people, including former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny, and Joseph Staten, the creative director of Halo 3: ODST at Bungie as well as the head of creative for Halo Infinite at 343 Industries.
Those two weren’t the only veterans with big games to their names, as studio art director Rafael Grassetti was also God of War Ragnarok’s art director, as well as a senior character artist for Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 3. That’s not to mention Jerry Edsall, the Netflix studio’s director of technology, who served as the lead programmer on Gears of War 5 and lead campaign engineer on Gears of War 4 at The Coalition, and studio design director Gavin Irby, was previously campaign design lead at Bungie for Destiny 2 and the lead ecology designer for Overwatch 2 at Blizzard.
Game File reports that Netflix declined to confirm how many people have been affected by Team Blue’s closure, but a representative apparently revealed that Sonny, Staten, and Grassetti are gone – it’s not clear if they were directly impacted by layoffs, or if they left the studio by their own volition. Edsall’s LinkedIn also notably states that he’s “ex-Netflix.”