Netflix Acquires Ready Player Me – What does this mean for Metaverse platforms that use Ready Player Me avatars? – Ryan Schultz

I somehow missed the major news released last Friday. clearly It will have a significant impact on existing Metaverse platforms, including well-known companies such as VRChat. On December 19, 2025, Sarah Perez wrote in an article on a technology news website: Tech Crunch:

Netflix has announced the acquisition of Ready Player Me, an Estonia-based avatar creation platform, after shifting its gaming strategy to focus more on games played on TV. The streamer said Friday that it plans to use the startup’s development tools and infrastructure to build avatars that will allow Netflix subscribers to convey their personas and fandom across a variety of games.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ready Player Me has raised $72 million in venture backing from investors including a16z, Endeavor, Konvoy Ventures, Plural, and various angels, including co-founders of companies like Roblox, Twitch, and King Games.

Netflix told TechCrunch that a startup team of about 20 people will join the company. Of the four founders Rainer Selvet, Haver Järveoja, Kaspar Tiri and Timmu Tõke, only CTO Rainer Selvet is moving to Netflix. There’s no telling how long it will be until Avatar is released. It also doesn’t detail which games or game types will get the avatars first.

Following the acquisition, Ready Player Me will discontinue its services, including its online avatar creation tool PlayerZero, on January 31, 2026.

Scott Hayden, in an article written for: The road to VR Add the following to your website:

“Our vision has always been to enable avatars and identities to move across different games and virtual worlds,” said Timmu Tõke, CEO of Ready Player Me. “We’ve been taking independent paths for a long time to make that vision a reality, and we’re thrilled that the Ready Player Me team is now joining Netflix to expand our skills and expertise to a global audience and contribute to the exciting vision Netflix has for games.”

Ready Player Me also announced that it will take its avatar creation service offline starting January 31, 2026.

And if you actually go to the Ready Player Me website, a banner at the top of the screen declares:

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to create this together. The service will no longer be available from January 31, 2026. If you have any questions, please contact devs@readyplayer.me.

I feel sorry for the poor person who gets all the emails, as there are numerous metaverse platforms that use Ready Player Me as their avatar creation component rather than building their own avatar design system in-house. All of these platforms are now a little over a month away from offering a service that will replace the one they have provided so far with Ready Player Me, which ends on January 31, 2026!

Ready Player Me has been the preferred solution for both gaming companies and metaverse companies to outsource much of the avatar creation process. Among those companies is VRChat. Scott Hayden says:

Netflix has yet to hint that it’s getting into the XR game, so it’s safe to say that the Ready Player Me acquisition and subsequent exit is somewhat of a blow to a certain group of people. VR Chat user.

VR Chat Over the years, beginners looking to create their own avatar have almost always chosen Ready Player Me. The platform also allowed users to upload personal photos and create cartoon-like personas that could be easily combined with various parts.

And although they were not always the most numerous original It’s hard to argue with the platform’s ease of use, as the web-based tool is not only cross-platform by nature, but also offers unique avatars already crafted. VR Chat.

I’m not too worried about the impact on VRChat. As Scott goes on to write in his article, there are alternatives, but they require a bit more technical know-how on the user’s part. VRChat also has a thriving third-party avatar creation and selling ecosystem, including a series of very popular virtual marketplace avatar shopping events. VRChat will be fine. However, smaller metaverse platforms like Spatial.io that rely entirely on Ready Player Me’s services will now have to find and implement replacement services in a very short period of time.

At first glance, NETFLIX’s acquisition of Ready Player Me reminds me of when Cloud Party, a fledgling metaverse platform (which I’ve written about on my blog before), was acquired by Yahoo! It goes back to early 2014, about 10 years ago. The entire small company (only 3-4 people) was “acquired” by Yahoo! and shut down their Cloud Party platform (a truly memorable transfer that left me emotional as they shut down their servers. This link is from an old Blogger.com blog where I wrote about Cloud Party – it’s still working!). Employees at Yahoo! Work at Yahoo! And God only knows what happened to them, or what project they were hired for. (Of course, Yahoo! is a shadow of its former self. Does anyone still use Yahoo!?)

This news makes it very clear that NETFLIX has big plans for its gaming service and has “acquired” Ready Player Me’s staff (and assets) to use in future projects. Whatever project they take on, what they gain is the loss of hundreds of virtual worlds, games, and social VR/AR platforms that rely on Ready Player Me.

The fallout from all of this will be interesting to see.

Updated December 23, 2025: Another thing that came to mind after publishing this blog post is that metaverse-building companies that choose to outsource their service aspects to other companies, like Ready Player Me, need to be prepared for the possibility that that company may be sold, change its terms of service, or even go out of business. Building something like your own avatar system may take more time and money, but at least you have control over it and don’t risk having the rug pulled out for you.

Thanks to our Metaverse friend Carlos Austin for sharing this news.

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