Every Monday, mobilegamer.biz brings you the latest on who’s moving where.
Netflix continues to make big moves in mobile. Earlier today it announced the formation of a new Helsinki studio led by Zynga’s Marko Lastikka, but that’s not the only recent addition to the team.
Thomas Baxter is now director of strategic partnerships at the streaming service, moving over from Activision Blizzard King, where he was director of mobile partnerships. Baxter has also worked in product at Kabam and was a producer at Gree.
Chase Shi has stepped up at Blizzard to become Diablo Immortal’s director of product. “Thank the team for shipping the best F2P MMO product! Now it’s time to keep up the momentum and make DI a long-term success!” he said on LinkedIn.
Shi joined Blizzard as director of product management in August 2021, moving over from a similar role at Jam City. He has also held senior product positions at Scopely and Firefly Games.
Vincent Bernardin is the latest person at TikTok to move to a senior gaming role, taking up the position of brand partnership manager for global gaming at the social platform. Ilyas Bekmurzayev has also moved into a role as client solution manager within the platform’s global gaming group.
Collin Foss announced this week that Merge Friends maker Skunkworks would be disbanding.
“The stiffening of capital markets brought new expectations for fundraising, making it almost impossible to raise,” he said on LinkedIn. “Merge Friends suffered from poor product decisions, almost entirely my own inability as the game lead. The business case, which drove the company’s valuation, floundered as IDFA and red hot UA spending led to difficulties scaling. And without timely product releases focusing on shoring up the monetization performance, the game was DOA.”
“I share these failings openly, without fear. I joined a startup to learn and grow and that’s exactly what happened. Did it suck sometimes? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely!”
Foss has now moved over to Supercell-backed studio Papukaya as game lead.
In-game ads and monetisation firm Bidstack has hired a new chief revenue officer, Jude O’Connor. He moves to Bidstack after a seven-year career at AdColony, and will now be tasked with overseeing global revenue and growth while leading the US team across sales, publishing, marketing and strategy.
King’s former vice president of creative Stephen Jarrett confirmed that he is now co-founder and chief creative officer at new Wildlife-backed studio 8-Bit Bandits.
Incoming at King are Maddie Blundell, who has joined as video producer from TellyJuice,and Juan Francisco Pastor, who is now engineering manager at the Candy Crush maker.
