Netflix's foray into mobile gaming continues as the streamer today announced it is setting up an in-house games studio headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, and led by co-founder and general manager of the Zygna Helsinki game development studio Marko Lastikka. The studio will join a quartet of studios Netflix has established: Next Games, Night School Studio and Boss Fight Entertainment. Each was designed to develop games aimed at specific tastes, the company said.

The streamer says it chose to locate its newest studio in Helsinki because it's already home to some of the world's best game talent. Notably, the location will also be Netflix's first studio to be built from ground up.

The company has thus far relied on deal-making and acquisitions to get into mobile gaming thus far.

It acquired Finland-based Next Games earlier this year, which was founded by a former Rovio exec and is the publisher of Stranger Things and Walking Dead games for $72 million. It also bought Allen, Texas-based studio Boss Fight Entertainment this year.

Meanwhile, Glendale, California-based Night School Studio — the first games studio to join Netflix — released its first title for the streaming service, Oxenfree, at the company's Tudum fan event over the weekend. The game is Netflix's version of the original 2016 title but now comes with no ads or in-app purchases and includes localization support.

The new Helsinki games studio will be led by director Marko Lastikka, who until recently worked at Zynga since January 2017 and helped to develop Farmville 3. Prior to Zynga, the exec also worked as a GM and executive producer at Electronic Arts, developing the SimCity BuildIt mobile games for both iOS and Android. Before that, Lastikka spent more than eight years at Digital Chocolate.

We are just at the beginning of our mobile gaming journey," Netflix said in an announcement. "Games are a form of long-form storytelling. A new game can take years to make." This means that its "long-term play for mobile goes way past the kind of casual games it has offered its subscribers so far.". Since launching its mobile games service in November 2021, the streamer has added dozens of titles to its lineup, all offering the value proposition of being an ad-free experience without in-app purchases. Netflix has said it aims to have more than 50 titles in the lineup by year-end.

However, so far, the company hasn't seen outsized demand for its games. Netflix game data has only recently been reported by mobile app data provider Apptopia, stating the service was averaging daily users of 1.7 million, and its catalog had garnered just 23.3 million downloads as of August. This was while Netflix's overall subscriber base then totaled 221 million.

But Netflix's vision for gaming goes a lot further than the kind of one-off deals with studios it's made to license games for its catalog, as today's announcement suggests. And the company has also been seen building new features that would enable users to do more with its games. For example, they can now create distinctive game handles in several games, such as The Breach, Bowling Ballers, Mahjong Solitaire and its equivalent of Heads Up! In addition, it is developing other social gaming features, which include leaderboards and how to view when others are online or invite them to play.

The company hasn't revealed further details on its plans for its new Helsinki studio, such as the number of employees planned for the location or the number or type of projects it will develop in the near months, but stated that it will share more further down the road.