While Netflix had announced earlier this month that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Warner Bros. in a deal valued at $82.7 billion, at the time, the streaming giant hadn’t really mentioned anything about latter company’s gaming division. As caught by WCCFTech, Netflix’s co-CEO, president and director Gregory Peters spoke about Warner Bros. Games at the UBS Global Technology Conference this week, where he said that the gaming division wasn’t mentioned because it is a “relatively minor” part of the deal.
When asked about it, Peters said that, while WB Games has done some impressive things, going as far as shouting out Hogwarts Legacy, he believes they are still “relatively minor” in the grand scheme of things. This led to Netflix not really attributing any value to the gaming division. Once the deal is complete, however, Peters noted that Netflix is excited to work with WB Games, and that there is “definitely an opportunity there”.
“And maybe worth going back again to sort of how we thought about the deal and building our valuation model, while they definitely have been doing some great work in the game space, we actually didn’t attribute any value to that from the get-go because they’re relatively minor compared to the grand scheme of things,” said Peters. “Now we are super excited because some of those properties that they’ve built, Hogwarts Legacy is a great example of that, have been done quite well, and we think that we can incorporate that into what we’re offering. They’ve got great studios and great folks working there. So we believe that there’s definitely an opportunity there. But just to be clear, we haven’t built that into our deal model.”
It is worth noting that there are several studios under the larger Warner Bros. Games umbrella, including heavy hitters like Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm Studios, Batman: Arkham series developer Rocksteady Games, and Hogwarts Legacy developer Avalanche Software. However, it is also no secret that the gaming division has been going through a down period, thanks in large part to the failure of live-service titles like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and MultiVersus to make any reasonable dent in the market.
The failure of these live-service offerings have had far-reaching affects on some studios, and a report from back in February indicates that they were part of the reason behind the closure of Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB Games San Diego. The closure of Monolith Productions was especially noteworthy as it also led to the cancellation of the in-development Wonder Woman game.
“This is another tough decision, as we recognize Monolith’s storied history of delivering epic fan experiences through amazing games,” said the company when the studio’s closure was announced. “We greatly admire the passion of the three teams and thank every employee for their contributions. As difficult as today is, we remain focused on and excited about getting back to producing high-quality games for our passionate fans, developed by our world-class studios, and getting our games business back to profitability and growth in 2025 and beyond.”
