After three years under the Netflix umbrella, Spry Fox is once again a fully independent studio. As a studio, we’ve managed to somehow survive countless industry upheavals and release a whole lot of original games, like Triple Town, Alphabear, Road Not Taken and Cozy Grove. And after five years, we’re getting ready to finally launch our biggest title ever, Spirit Crossing.
We’re making a big bet: that a lot of people are hungry for a massively social game about self-expression, friendship and community, built with intense respect and affection for everyone who plays it. If this sounds like something you might be excited about, here’s how you can get involved:
- Wishlist / Follow Spirit Crossing on Steam.
- Sign up for our newsletter for beta info.
- Join our development team in Discord to give us feedback and learn more.
Where we’re currently at, as a studio
Nearly 50 people are currently working on Spirit Crossing, mostly full-time, some as part-time contractors or as co-developers through partner studios. That’s smaller than you’d expect for a comparable game (teams are often 2-4x our size), so we’re relying on experience and making smart tradeoffs. Almost everyone here has been making games professionally for 10-30 years.
To make this work, we’re also making real sacrifices. All of us are taking large pay cuts. Daniel and I have reduced our salaries to $20,000/year, and we’ve spent our own cash to buy the studio back. And we are taking all the equity in the new company and giving the majority of it to the rest of the studio’s employees. In a world where executives tend to make 10x the salaries that employees do, and have 100x the equity, we want Spry Fox to be an example of something fairer and hopefully much better.
A rollercoaster beginning
The spinout from Netflix happened extremely fast. Three months from “maybe we should explore this” to “we’re independent again.” To put this in perspective, a spinout of this magnitude would typically take 6 to 9 months. So we’ve been sprinting to disentangle ourselves. It has been a LOT of work.
Those headaches aside, we are so thankful. For the past three years, the game industry has been such a bleak place. Countless companies have shut down, including some truly great studios that made history-changing games. I am very grateful that during this otherwise dark time, something this surprising and hopeful could happen for us.
What independence changes for Spirit Crossing
Under Netflix, Spirit Crossing had a simple objective: launch for free, on mobile, exclusively for Netflix members.
Now we’re independent, so Netflix won’t be paying all our bills anymore. (But Netflix remains a great partner, and Spirit Crossing will still be free on mobile for Netflix members!) If Spirit Crossing is going to live and thrive for decades, on many platforms, we need to do extra work: dev work to accommodate new platforms, more QA, while implementing a real business model that can sustain live development into the future… all while also, you know, continuing to polish and actually launch the game!
Our goal for 2026 is straightforward and very personal to us: launch a big, ambitious cozy game that brings people together, encourages kindness, and reduces loneliness in the world. A game literally about building a village together.
We know from extensive research that loneliness is massively harming people’s health and happiness, and even causing premature death. So we believe there is nothing more meaningful that we could be putting our time into than this. On a personal note, I’d much rather give up my salary and the security of a big company job than be doing anything else right now.
Timeline: We’re targeting a public beta in spring 2026 (roughly April–June) and a full launch later in 2026. These dates could move as we do the extra work to support more platforms and build a sustainable business model, but we’ll keep communicating clearly as we go.
We haven’t forgotten our other games
We also care deeply about the worlds we’ve already made – and the people who love them. One example: Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit never got the launch it deserved as part of Netflix. We’re joining forces with old friends to help bring it to PC and consoles, and we’ll share details as soon as we’re able.
Once again: how you can support us (if you’d like to!)
If you’re excited about Spirit Crossing and want to help us thrive as an independent studio once again, here are two high-impact ways. One is to click on those links at the top of this message. The other is to share this message through social media, or directly to someone who you know.
Anyone who loves cozy games – or who’s been craving a game that cares about community – might benefit from knowing about Spirit Crossing. And it would help us a lot.
We’re going to keep writing updates for you all. If there’s anything you’d like to hear about, like more information about our spinout, development details, what we’re learning, what we’re struggling with… please tell us. We want to be as open as we can.
-David (aka Chedd)
