Netflix has acquired gaming avatar company Ready Player Me for an undisclosed amount.
TechCrunch Reports that the employees of the Estonian startup will move to the streaming giant, and their company will be liquidated on January 31, 2026.
Only one of the Ready Player Me founders will be joining Netflix, CTO Rainer Selvet. It is also not yet known when the company's avatar creation offerings will be available to the streaming giant's audience. Ready Player Me will allow Netflix audiences to create avatars that can be used in various games on its platform.
Ready Player Me was founded in 2013 by Selvet, Haver Järveoja, Kaspar Thiri and Timmu Tyke. To date, the company has raised $72 million in funding, including funding from a16z.
In a post on LinkedInReady Player Me CEO Timmu Tyke said his company will join the streaming giant to “contribute to their gaming strategy.”
“Our team will be joining Netflix to contribute to their gaming strategy through our cross-game avatar technology, which will allow players to carry their own personality and fandom across games,” Tyke wrote.
“We founded the company 12 years ago together with Rainer, Kaspar and Haver. We were 20 years old from small towns in Estonia. We didn't know anything about technology or startups, but we were obsessed with avatars. Over the past 12 years, we have created many different avatar-based products, from hardware scanners to personal avatar technology, and ultimately launched Ready Player Me over 5 years ago.
“I'm very proud to be working on Ready Player Me, which takes cross-game compatibility further than anyone else and serves thousands of developers.”
Netflix has been developing its gaming offering for several years now. To begin with, the company acquired studios and created AAA developers, however, when Alain Taskan replaced Mike Verda, the company changed course and curtailed the creation of new games.
The streaming giant recently sold Spry Fox back to the studio's founders..
At the beginning of December, Netflix announced that it intends to buy Warner Bros for $82.7 billion.; rival Paramount Skydance also initiated a hostile takeover dealvaluing the company at $108.4 billion for all of Warner Bros Discovery.
Discussing a deal Netflix described Warner Bros' gaming division as “relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things.”.
