Monument Valley maker Ustwo Games has been an easy proxy for the state of premium games on mobile for over a decade.
So it’s fascinating to discover that after a long spell as the go-to studio for slick, socially-conscious Apple Arcade and Netflix games, CEO Maria Sayans says it is going fully multiplatform in 2026 – PC first, in fact. And doing so, it is reducing its dependency on those subscription platforms.
Ustwo Games was once central to Apple Arcade and Netflix’s output. It effectively made Assemble With Care and Alba for Apple Arcade, and later struck a deal with Netflix to make Desta: The Memories Between and Monument Valley 3. But both subscription platforms have moved on from commissioning the original, artsy games Ustwo is best known for.
Speaking to us shortly after the Madeira Games Summit, Ustwo Games CEO Sayans said the London studio must now change course – particularly after Netflix’s games strategy was scrapped and rebooted last year, a move that took Ustwo by surprise.
It meant that Monument Valley 3 was only live on Netflix for six months, and the studio had to scrap its plans for the game and rework them to fit around a PC, console and ‘free-to-start’ mobile re-release.
The below conversation has been edited lightly for clarity and readability.
Why you are shifting focus across platforms – is it getting even harder to make the kind of games you want to make on mobile?
Our move into PC and console is something that started in 2019. At the time it was just about diversifying and expanding our reach. We ported Assemble with Care to PC, followed by Alba which sim-shipped on mobile and PC, and console soon after. From Alba onwards we have been thinking of our games as multiplatform.
What has changed more recently is shifting our focus to ‘PC first’ in our future titles, rather than mobile first. This stems from a realisation that there is a ceiling to how much you can do on PC and console when you are perceived as a mobile-first game, and that you make compromises both in product design and go-to-market strategies when mobile is your lead platform.
Do you feel like Ustwo became too dependent on platform holders like Apple and Netflix?
We have been extremely lucky to be able to make games with Apple and Netflix. Making games for those subscription platforms at the time gave us a lucrative and stable business and a base from which to build our expansion into other platforms.
But ultimately you are one step removed from your audience, and you are dependent on their content strategy, so it is not a solid base to build a long term business around. So ultimately we needed to wean ourselves off that dependency, by continuing to invest on our own IP, building porting and publishing skills in-house, and strengthening our direct relationship with our audience.
What can you say about happened with Monument Valley 3 on Netflix – why did the game leave the service so soon?
I cannot say much, mainly because it came as a total surprise to us. After working with Netflix for a few years developing Monument Valley 3, the game launched in December 2024 with a strong marketing campaign behind it, and six months later they told us they wanted to take it off the service. A number of games were taken off the service at the same time, so I assume it is related to the evolution of their content strategy and priorities.
One thing we took away from this experience is another confirmation of what an excellent team we have. We had made design decisions on MV3 that were meant to suit a subscription service, in terms of engagement, retention features and content update frequency.
Once we learnt the game was coming off the service, we took that as an opportunity to redesign the game ending and post launch content in a way that better suited a premium product, and quickly shifted our focus to making a version for the app stores.
We had to do it extremely quickly so it could be implemented for the version we were about to release on console. I am very proud of how the team took this in their stride, saw an opportunity to make the game better and reacted very quickly.
What are you are working on currently, and where is the focus – PC, console, mobile, all of the above…?
In terms of platform, the shift is that we now think as PC as the base, where we can build more direct relationships with our audience and community, and console and mobile as platforms that will give us reach. So we are not abandoning any platform, just being more deliberate about the best way to build that audience and engage with it over time.
We have three game teams, and they are at different stages of development. When the right time comes, we’ll reveal more about those games.
Premium mobile games have been declared dead several times now…what are your thoughts on the state of this category right now?
There are some categories, like party games, where premium mobile is a healthy business. So I would not write off the model completely. For other games, the ‘try before you buy’ model offers a path.
We have had some good success with that on Assemble with Care and Monument Valley in some regions. But it’s not enough of a market to justify a significant development budget. So ultimately this needs to be one of your platforms, not the only platform.
Would you ever go fully free-to-play or would that be counter to the studio’s ethos?
We have explored and experimented with free-to-play, but never launched those experiments. I would not say it is a case of being against our ethos. There are plenty of free-to-play games that we play and love. We were just lacking some of the core skills and (more importantly) the funding and risk appetite to go full in
Mobile free-to-play is an extremely competitive and challenging space, and you have to be best in class and have strong backing to operate in that space.
