Netflix Introduces Interactive Real-Time Voting for Live Content

After shifting its gaming strategy to focus more on TV-based games, Netflix announced it's acquiring Ready Player Me, an avatar-creation platform based in Estonia. The streamer said Friday it plans to use the startup's development tools and infrastructure to build avatars that will allow Netflix subscribers to carry their personas and fandom across different games.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ready Player Me has raised $72 million in venture capital from investors including a16z, Endeavour, Konvoy Ventures, Plural, and various angels, including the co-founders of companies such as Roblox, Twitch, and King Games.

Netflix told TechCrunch the startup's team of around 20 people will be joining the company. Of the four founders, only CTO Rainer Selvet is moving to Netflix. It doesn't have an estimate of how long it will be until avatars launch. Nor does it specify which games or game types will be first to receive avatars.
Following the acquisition, Ready Player Me will wind down its services on January 31, 2026, including its online avatar-creation tool, PlayerZero.

Image Credits: Ready Player Me

"Our vision has always been to enable avatars and identities to travel across many games and virtual worlds," Ready Player Me CEO Timmu Tõke said in a statement. "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."

Netflix's Gaming Shift

Netflix's deal signals a shift in the company's approach to games.
When it entered the market four years ago, the company offered mobile games to its subscribers, who logged in using their Netflix accounts. At the time, Netflix described gaming as a new category, similar to its expansions into original films, animation, and unscripted TV.

Netflix acquired numerous gaming studios and titles and licensed others, under the leadership of Mike Verdu, the company's VP of games, who formerly worked at EA and Kabam. That strategy saw mixed results. While some of its larger, better-known titles, such as GTA: San Andreas, may have attracted customers, others were virtually unknown. (The company recently said the GTA game was on its way out, too, alongside dozens of other titles.)
Netflix also shut down many of its studio acquisitions or returned them to their founders.
To some extent, these changes could have been anticipated. Going into this, Netflix knew that moving into gaming would be an experiment, and it would have to adapt as it discovered what worked and what didn't.

As part of its strategy shift, Netflix last year brought in Alain Tascan, formerly of Epic Games, as its president of games. Verdu, who was then VP of generative AI for games, left seven months later.
Under Tascan, Netflix has expanded its TV gaming lineup and begun focusing on party games, kids' games, narrative games, and more mainstream titles.
Recently, the streamer released a slate of party games for TVs and mobile, including Netflix Puzzled, PAW Patrol Academy, plus WWE 2K25, Red Dead Redemption, and Best Guess, a live party game with hosts Hunter March and Howie Mandel, and a $1 million jackpot. This week, it also announced that a new FIFA title would be coming to TVs in time for the 2026 World Cup.

At TechCrunch Disrupt this October, Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone announced the company was introducing interactive, real-time voting for live content, which it was already testing with a live cooking show and would soon bring to its reboot of the talent show "Star Search."
In this way, Netflix is now more closely following the TV industry's embrace of mobile, interactive experiences, such as audience voting for "American Idol" contestants or favourite couples on reality shows like "Love Island."

Whether Netflix can convince its audience to view its brand — traditionally associated with passive, lean-back viewing — as a destination for interactive activities like gaming remains to be seen.

Correction: Netflix initially told TechCrunch all founders were joining. It is only CTO Rainer Selvet who is joining  Netflix, corrected. The article has been updated.