Netflix announced a deal to purchase Warner Bros. Studios in a cash-and-stock deal (including debt) that values it at $82.7 billion. That now faces a challenge from Paramount, attempting to mount a hostile takeover, but there’s one aspect of all this that seems to have fallen by the wayside: WB Games.
Warner Bros’ not-insignificant games division has largely been left out of all this deal coverage in favor of streaming services and theatrical release debates. But that may be because Netflix views it as not a key component of the deal. At least in how it pertains to the deal itself. Speaking at a presentation about the upcoming deal, Netflix co-CEO, president and director Gregory Peters talked briefly about games.
He said WB Games had “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.”
That sounds ominous, but he did at least highlight one game that they’re still excited about, which would be Hogwarts Legacy:
“Now we are super excited because some of those properties that they’ve built, Hogwarts is a great example of that, have been done quite well, and we think that we can incorporate that into what we’re offering,” said Peters. “They’ve got great studios and great folks working there. So we think that there’s definitely an opportunity there. But just to be clear, we haven’t built that into our deal model.”
What he’s saying is that the price of the deal was largely not factoring in the worth of WB Games, reinforcing the idea that it seems like an afterthought in all this. Previously, there were reports that Warner was looking to sell off WB Games, but that never happened, and so, it would be included in this current deal, were it to manifest.
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It’s kind of wild to consider, given that the original Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling game of its year, beating out even Call of Duty, and a sequel would likely be a smash hit in the same way. But past that, WB Games has DC games, including the Arkham series, Mortal Kombat, LEGO games, Game of Thrones games and more.
Netflix’s history with games does not really match with all this. Netflix does, in fact, have a games division, but one focused mainly on mobile-style games with a few small-scale ones based on its IPs. Netflix closed down its own AAA studio it had formed in 2024. Now, they are wading into the potential to make some of the biggest games in the industry, but also take on big risks (WB’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League reportedly lost $200 million).
Even if there are some cursory comments here about “an opportunity” for WB Games, it’s no wonder why many are skittish about what could happen here. And if the deal went through it’s still not impossible WB Games could be sold to someone else, rather than Netflix wanting to add AAA video games to its development roster.
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