This article was originally published on February 20, 2026 - read the full issue

By Marie Dealessandri

For the past 15 years, Ustwo Games has grown to become one of London's most acclaimed studios, a poster child for premium mobile games that has represented the UK industry on the global stage. It was among the first to be featured by Apple with 2014's Monument Valley, before becoming a pioneer for new models on mobile – Assemble With Care was in the first wave of Apple Arcade titles in 2019, while Monument Valley 3 launched as a Netflix exclusive in December 2024.

So it certainly came as a surprise (including to the studio itself) when Netflix announced that Monument Valley 3, intended to be a triumphant return for the franchise after seven years, was to be removed from the platform only six months after launch, despite Ustwo's live-service plans for the game.

"It became clear that Apple and Netflix's content strategy was going away from the core of what Ustwo Games makes," CEO María Sayans tells Knowledge. "We launched Desta with Netflix – that didn't really find an audience – and Monument Valley 3 did very well at launch, but Netflix really wanted retention, and the retention that we had built into the game probably wasn't enough for them. It wasn't working any more with their strategy, which is why they cancelled it."

Following the cancellation of Monument Valley 3 (which has since launched on PC and re-released on mobile with a free-to-start model), the studio announced in January that it would become a "PC-first" studio. Given that Ustwo has always ported its games to PC and console after their original release, this wasn't an enormous surprise. But for a studio that had become synonymous with premium mobile, it certainly feels like the end of an era.

"The idea that we would start making PC-first games already existed before the Netflix cancellation of MV3," Sayans explains, "but that event accelerated [its] need because it created a hole in our revenue projections. It [also] showed that we were unlikely to sign another deal with these platforms the way that we had so far. We need to be self-reliant. And in order to be self reliant in 2026 making videogames, you need to have a direct relationship with your audience. And the only way to have a direct relationship with your audience is on PC. That made it really clear that we couldn't play the long game and try to pivot ourselves into PC/console slowly over time – we needed to be much more focused on doing that."

Sayans notes that Ustwo's strategy to build for mobile then port to PC and console worked to a certain extent. "But it wasn't really freeing us up from this kind of hamster [wheel] cycle, which is making games for somebody else," she points out.

The PC shift came at a cost, though, with the studio making four people redundant in the past couple of weeks. For context, Ustwo employs in the region of 30 staff.

"[The number] hasn't been too big, but it's very meaningful for us," Sayans says. "We needed to adjust our cost base. As part of this pivot to PC, it also means that we're not going to release a game until the end of 2027, which means that we're suddenly finding ourselves at the end of Monument Valley 3's post-launch release with a lot of people on the bench and not a project for them to move on to. We looked at ways in which we could absorb some of that, but we couldn't absorb all of it… It's small when you think about the number, but for the people affected, it's huge."

The studio didn't rely exclusively on salaries to reduce its costs, but also "cut down on a whole bunch of luxuries," Sayans adds.

"We needed to be as lean as possible to navigate the next year [to] 18 months until we launch our game, because that's the only way to make sure that we're setting these games up for success as they start to come on to PC."

Sustainability vs the subscription model

We ask Sayans about the industry's shift to subscription services – with Xbox Game Pass, Netflix Games, and beyond – and whether it has leant too heavily in these directions.

"Definitely don't rely on them to survive [as a studio]," she says. "I think they have a role to play, but that role is capped. If you go back a few years, some people were saying subscription is the future of the industry… Well, I think it's clear that it's not. It plays a role within a certain context, but it's definitely not going to be more than a certain percentage of how people consume games, and it's definitely not the future of the industry.

"There will be developers that find a way to to work within those constraints because of the kind of games that they make and the IP that they work with. Some people will make a nice business out of it, but it's not for us, and it's definitely not the future of the industry, [nor will] it save the industry.

"More gamers are coming into the market, and more and more developers need to build these direct relationships with players, because it's the only way in which you can go from building one game to actually building a business. You can no longer put all your eggs into one basket. It's about risk management across a number of projects, and you always have to be in a position where, if one game fails, it's not going to bring down the studio. You have to create ways in which the likelihood of success is higher. Which is why we have three teams working on three games, instead of having just one team focusing on just one game, and why we're not just focusing on the Monument Valley IP. We're building other IPs and looking more at self-publishing."

As for mobile, Sayans says the heyday of premium games has been gone for a long time ("ever since Florence launched"). While some releases can still be successful in that space – party games and board games in particular – for most developers, it's simply become an additional distribution channel rather than the main one.

"And I think that's [the reality]: you've got to think about your games having multiple revenue sources and multiple distribution channels."

This article was originally published on February 20, 2026 - read the full issue