Netflix is acquiring Estonian startup Ready Player Me, a company that creates “cross-game avatar technology” that allows players to bring their digital personas with them across different games, company CEO Timmu Toke shared in a LinkedIn post. The acquisition is part of Netflix’s new games strategy, which emphasizes accessible multiplayer titles and adaptation of the streaming service’s IPs.
Ready Player Me’s team of approximately 20 employees will be incorporated into Netflix’s staff, techcrunch writes, however Tokay is the only one of the startup’s four founders who will remain after the acquisition. Neither company has shared when avatar technology will be included in Netflix’s games or which games will support the feature when they do.
In addition to designing its avatar system to be easy for developers to implement in their games, Ready Player Me’s big pitch for its system is to use AI to automatically redesign avatars for different games’ art styles and “automatically fit assets into any avatar rig or topology without manual work.”
Netflix has taken many different approaches to games over the years, but recently, the company has actively stepped back from AAA development and its more ambitious projects. In addition to its premiere on HQ Trivia, Netflix’s last few game announcements for 2025 focused on a collection of streamable party games and a partnership with FIFA to release a new soccer sim in 2026. All of those projects could support Avatars in some form, now Netflix just needs to decide how.
<a href