Netflix is building a games studio from scratch in Finland and brought in someone experienced in the field to lead it.

Amir Rahimi, Vice President of Netflix Game Studios, shared this news on the official Netflix site.

“We are establishing an internal games studio in Helsinki, Finland, with Marko Lastikka as the studio director. This is another step in our vision to build a world-class games studio that will bring a variety of delightful and deeply engaging original games — with no ads and no in-app purchases — to our hundreds of millions of members around the world,” Rahimi announced.

Marko Lastikka is notable for being General Manager and Executive Producer in Electronic Arts from 2012 to 2016. He is also the co-founder of the EA Helsinki tracktwenty game studio, and he's responsible for the creation and live service of SimCity BuildIt, according to his LinkedIn page. After his EA stint, he went on to become Vice President and General Manager of Zynga, and co-founded the Zynga Helsinki game dev studio. If it isn't obvious yet, Lastikka has been in the industry for quite some time now.

Helsinki is not new ground for Netflix Games. “It is home to some of the best game talent in the world,” said Rahimi. “This will be a games studio that we build from scratch, and our second games studio in Helsinki alongside Next Games, which became part of Netflix earlier this year. Along with Night School Studio and Boss Fight Entertainment, these four studios, each with different strengths and focus areas, will develop games that will suit the diverse tastes of our members.”

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Rahimi closed out the statement by making an open-ended statement, and rightfully so, as Netflix is young in the gaming industry.

“It’s still early days, and we have much more work to do to deliver a great games experience on Netflix. Creating a game can take years, so I’m proud to see how we’re steadily building the foundation of our games studios in our first year, and look forward to sharing what we produce in the coming years.”

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