Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.It looks like Netflix’s big-time gaming ambitions have hit a slippery patch. The internal studio, Team Blue, unveiled in October 2022 with a lot of fanfare, has been shut down. This comes as a surprise, given the big-name hires like former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny, Halo Infinite creative lead Joseph Staten, and Sony Santa Monica art director Rafael Grassetti. But those “next big thing in gaming” ambitions seemed short-lived. Gamefile reports that all three big hires are no longer at the company. A reason for the closure wasn’t provided, but it feels rather sudden. Former Blizzard and Bungie design lead Gavin Irby, who joined the studio in October 2023, shared a job listing for a senior technical designer on LinkedIn two months ago. There have been some recent changes at the top: Alain Tascan, previously the executive vice president of game development at Epic, joined Netflix in July as its new president of games, while Verdu moved to a new role focusing on “transformative innovation in game creation and development,” whatever that means. Image: KnowTechie Netflix has had some notable successes with its mobile platform, including the well-regarded Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals and the Grand Theft Auto trilogy, which Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in February was “a resounding success, quickly yielding the highest rate of installs…Netflix’s gaming studio Team Blue is officially kaput amid layoffs