: Netflix buys its third videogame company, Texas-based Boss Fight

United States

Netflix Inc. has bought another videogame company, as the streaming giant looks to create a new revenue stream in gaming.

Netflix NFLX, +0.33% announced Thursday is has acquired Allen, Texas-based Boss Fight Entertainment. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Boss Fight was founded in 2013 by former Zynga Inc. ZNGA, employees, and is known for its mobile game “Dungeon Boss” for Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.

“This studio’s extensive experience building hit games across genres will help accelerate our ability to provide Netflix members with great games wherever they want to play them,” Amir Rahimi, Netflix’s vice president of game studios, said in a statement. “Through partnerships with developers around the world, hiring top talent, and acquisitions like this, we hope to build a world-class games studio.”

In the same statement, Boss Fight’s founders said the games it will make for Netflix will be ad-free, allowing its developers “to focus on creating delightful game play without worrying about monetization.” Netflix said Boss Fight will continue to operate out of their current studios in Texas and Seattle.

Last July, Netflix first laid out its plans to offer videogames on its platform. “We view gaming as another new content category for us, similar to our expansion into original films, animation and unscripted TV,” Netflix executives told shareholders at the time.

Since then, it acquired independent videogame maker Night School Studios in September, and added Finnish mobile game studio Next Games earlier this month. In November, Netflix unveiled its first five mobile games for Android.

Netflix shares have slumped 38% year to date, and are down 25% over the past year, while the S&P 500 SPX, +1.43% is down 5% in 2022 but up 16% over the past 12 months.