Netflix is letting go of some of its best indie games

If you’ve been enjoying Hades on mobile via Netflix, you better get in those last few runs while you still can. First spotted by Engadget, and confirmed via the Netflix app, Supergiant’s Greek mythology-inspired roguelike and 21 other games are being delisted from the service next month. Several titles, like Braid, Katana Zero, and yes, Hades, were available on mobile exclusively via Netflix, meaning that when those games go, that’s potentially it for them on Android / iOS.

Here’s a full list of the games leaving Netflix next month. Most games depart the service July 14th, but Hades goes a little earlier, on July 1st. (Carmen Sandiego, however, doesn’t have a confirmed date for delisting, only that it’s “leaving soon.”)

• Battleship 
• Braid, Anniversary Edition 
• Carmen Sandiego 
• CoComelon: Play with JJ 
• Death’s Door 
• Diner Out: Merge Cafe 
• Dumb Ways to Survive 
• Ghost Detective
• Hades 
• Katana Zero
• Lego Legacy: Heroes Unboxed
• Ludo King
• Monument Valley
• Monument Valley 2
• Monument Valley 3
• Rainbow Six: Smol
• Raji: An Ancient Epic
• SpongeBob: Bubble Pop F.U.N.
• TED Tumblewords
• The Case of the Golden Idol
• The Rise of the Golden Idol
• Vineyard Valley

The Verge has reached out to the developers of the games that had their mobile versions available exclusively via Netflix to ask if they had plans to distribute them as premium titles. In an email, Nigel Lowrie, a spokesperson for Devolver Digital, wrote, “We are looking at bringing games that leave services like Poinpy, Katana Zero, and Death’s Door to mobile stores as premium titles.” 

He also said that the developer for each of these games has its own timeline for when that will happen, but Devolver is working to get them up on mobile storefronts “as soon as possible.” Devolver Digital has some experience with this, as Exit the Gungeon, which had a mobile version available exclusively via Apple Arcade, will become a paid game on iOS and Android after it was delisted from Apple’s gaming subscription service last year.

In the Discord server for Color Gray Games, the developer of the Golden Idol series, Andrejs Klavins, the games’ lead designer and programmer, wrote, “This is all recent news for us and all the practical implications have yet to be worked out.” The statement suggests that some developers were only recently told their games would be leaving the platform and not something that was necessarily pre-planned.

This removal of third-party games, many of which had decent, mainstream success outside of Netflix, reflects the platform’s shifting games strategy. It has halted its acquisition spree and, in October of last year, Netflix closed the new studio it spun up to produce a multiplatform AAA game before it could release anything. In an interview with The Verge at the Game Developers Conference in March, Netflix’s new president of games, Alain Tascan, said, “We need to find our voice.” 

Netflix plans on streamlining its offerings to focus more on games that are tied to Netflix-owned shows, multiplayer party games, games for kids, and “mainstream” titles that have their own large fan bases. And when you look at the numbers, that strategy makes sense.

According to data from Appfigures, a mobile analytics company, the most popular game on Netflix is — coming at no surprise — Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, with an estimated 37 million downloads. The next most popular, though it has less than half the downloads of San Andreas, is Squid Game: Unleashed, a tie-in game for the Netflix-produced Korean social thriller Squid Game. Those two games aren’t going anywhere for now. But if you’re a fan of any of the games above, they will be leaving soon, so try them while you can.