Last January we had gotten word that developer Spry Fox, the studio behind cozy games like Road Not Taken and Cozy Grove, was working on a non-violent MMO project promising “awe-inspiring outdoor spaces and intimate village life” and aiming to “improve people’s lives and reduce toxicity and loneliness in the world.” Since then, there’s been silence regarding that project save for an Epic Games publishing deal and some job postings referencing the game, but now there’s some more major news directly affecting the studio: Spry Fox has been acquired by Netflix.
For those who haven’t been following along, Netflix decided to enter the gaming space last November, adding mobile games to its subscription service at the interim, and then making additional inroads into the industry like establishing its own internal games studio based in Helsinki, Finland; opening a new studio in southern California; and acquiring Next Games, Night School Studio, and Boss Fight Entertainment – Spry Fox is now Netflix’s sixth games studio.
A blog penned by Spry Fox promises that this acquisition won’t stop any of its current projects, including the aforementioned cozy MMO. “Everyone at Spry Fox was already focused on making Cozy Grove 2 as well as a larger, non-violent MMO that we still haven’t revealed much about publicly, and that is still the case. So there’s no change in our current development efforts,” the post assures.
