Netflix announced it is acquiring Ready Player Me, a platform that lets players personalize the avatars they use across games.
Netflix said Friday it plans to use the Estonia-based company’s development tools and infrastructure to build avatars that will allow Netflix subscribers to take their own customized personae and fandom across different games.
Ready Player Me raised $72 million across a dozen years. Investors included A16z, Endeavor, Konvoy Ventures, Plural, and angels, including Riccardo Zacconi, Marc Petit, Sebastian Knutsson, Joshua Dyan, Mart Habakuk and Estonian Business School.
The price of the deal wasn’t disclosed. It’s clearly small compared to Netflix’s $72 billion bid for the assets of Warner Bros. Discovery, but it’s also a sign that Netflix still cares about a gaming-specific strategy as well.
After the deal Ready Player Me will wind down services on January 31, 2026, including for its online avatar creation tool, PlayerZero.
“I’m excited to announce that Ready Player Me has been acquired by Netflix,” said Timmu Tõke, CEO of Ready Player Me, in a LinkedIn post. “Our team will be joining Netflix to contribute to their gaming strategy with our cross-game avatar tech, enabling players to carry their identities and fandom across games.”
He added, “We started the company 12 years ago with Rainer, Kaspar and Haver. We were 20-year-olds from small towns in Estonia. We knew nothing about tech or startups, but were obsessed with avatars. Over the last 12 years, we have built many different products around avatars, from hardware scanners to personal avatar tech and eventually launching Ready Player Me more than five years ago.”
He said he was proud that the company pushed cross-game interoperability further than anyone else before and served thousands of developers.
Regarding Netflix, he said, “Our vision has always been to enable avatars and identities to travel across many games and virtual worlds. 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.”