is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
As Netflix continues to build out its gaming strategy, which has recently included a new era of TV party games, it’s going to let people build avatars — with the help of a new acquisition. The company is acquiring avatar company Ready Player Me and its “cross-game avatar tech” to let players “carry their identities and fandom across games,” according to Ready Player Me CEO Timmu Tõke.
Netflix “doesn’t have an estimate of how long it will be until avatars launch” or which games will get them first, TechCrunch reports. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed.
Ready Player Me’s team of about 20 people will join Netflix. The company’s services, which “thousands” of developers used to “power cross-platform avatars,” will “become unavailable” on January 31st, 2026, Ready Player Me says on its website.
“Our vision has always been to enable avatars and identities to travel across many games and virtual worlds,” Tõke says. “We’ve been on an independent path to make that vision a reality for a long time. I’m now very excited for the Ready Player Me team to join Netflix to scale our tech and expertise to a global audience and contribute to the exciting vision Netflix has for gaming.”