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Netflix: Sony Santa Monica veteran Rafael Grassetti revealed last week that he’s joining Netflix as art director on “a new original IP AAA game”. He was until recently art director on God of War: Ragnarok, and will now be working with Bungie and 343 veteran Joseph Staten and former Overwatch lead Chacko Sonny on the new project.
He joins ex-Microsoft tech director Jerry Edsall at Netflix, who has moved over to work on the same project as director of technology. Edsall was until recently working at Xbox studio The Coalition as gameplay and story systems tech director.
Fingersoft: The Hill Climb Racing developer has a new CFO, Annika Suni. She has over 20 years of experience as CFO in the pharmaceutical, advertising, media and IT industries.
Suni’s appointment means that Markus Vahtola, who was previously both CFO and CMO, will now focus 100% on his role as chief marketing officer.
Carry1st: Two new appointments at the African publisher this week. Claire Rozain is now senior manager for ad monetisation and user acquisition, taking up the role having left Rovio to set up Global Warming Games. Rozain was performance marketing lead at the Angry Birds maker as well as inclusive game design and development lead. She was also previously Gameloft’s senior UA manager, and has worked in similar roles at Pixel United and Match.
Jorgji Mavrodiev has been appointed senior data analyst. He moves from Ten Square Games, where he had the same role, and has previously worked with data at Megarama Games and Crazy Labs.
Super Evil Megacorp: PlayStation veteran Jitesh Mulchandani has joined the maker of Vainglory and Catalyst Black as gameplay engineer. He joins after a 10 year stint at PlayStation, where he most recently served as senior software engineer.
Space Ape: The Beatstar maker has appointed Michelle Simon as talent acquisition lead. She joins from recruitment firm Pixel Talent, where she was director, having also previously worked as a recruiter at Scede, King and Tesco.
Umami Games: Cofounder and CEO of the Danish hypercasual studio Riley Andersen confirmed on LinkedIn that the studio has now closed. Andersen and fellow cofounder Mads Anthony are now looking to start another company in the field of “creativity, UGC and AI”, said Andersen.
PicFinder: Former GameAnalytics CEO and Homa chief product officer Ioana Hreninciuc is now cofounder at PicFinder, an AI image generation startup.
Tactile Games: Four newbies at the Lily’s Garden maker this week. Jere L (ex-Metacore, Seriously, Frozenbyte), and Mia Lis Qvist (ex-EA, MovieStarPlanet) join as QA testers, Ebru Gümüştaş (ex-Sunday, No Pact, Gram) starts as 3D environment artist and Joana Santos is now producer.
