Spry Fox, the developer behind the Cozy Grove series of games, as well as the upcoming Spirit Crossing, will soon return to co-founders Daniel Cook and David Edrery. According to the publication Game File, the move is keeping in line with the changing policies at Netflix, which is additionally evidenced by the shutdown of the internal studio known as Team Blue last year. Unlike that, however, Spry Fox will remain as a studio, with Netflix having reportedly sold the studio back to its original creators, though no details on the deal have been made public yet.
The studio was founded initially in 2010, seeing some success with early titles like Triple Town. Eventually, Spry Fox would go on to get much more recognition in the industry for the cozy game Cozy Grove, as well as its sequel, which was published through Netflix. The series itself has been a frequent inclusion of the Wholesome Direct, which airs alongside the Summer Games Fest each year.
Spirit Crossing, for its part, is a cooperative life sim that focuses on making friends and building community. Despite the split, it appears Netflix will remain on as the publisher for the title, which is currently in alpha testing through Netflix’s gaming service. This departure does allow Spry Fox to now shop the title around to additional platforms as well. According to the developers, the title has been in development for over four years at this point.
Spry Fox was acquired by Netflix in October 2022, something that the the time the developers therein stated clearly their minds to some degree. A statement from the studio addressed this, saying:
In all honesty, being part of Netflix has been a huge relief for us. As you may or may not be aware, starting sometime around 2022, the video game industry was taking a very serious turn for the worse (economically speaking). Our industry has been experiencing its most serious downturn in decades. All around us, studios are doing layoffs or, worse, shutting down entirely. To call this ‘dispiriting’ would be a severe understatement… we have been very worried about our friends in the industry…
Meanwhile, Netflix has given Spry Fox more support and encouragement than we’ve ever experienced before. We now have the resources to make the games we want to make, on the timetable we want to make them, with very few compromises.
It remains to be seen at this point what this shift of ownership will offer the studio, but it is hard to deny that this is a better outcome than yet another studio closure.
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