Netflix is laying off about 1,000 employees, roughly 6% of its workforce, in what Variety reports is the company’s largest round of job cuts to date. Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters told staff in a memo on Wednesday, Oct. 14, that product, technology, legal and HR teams would take the biggest hit.
For players, the open question is Netflix Games. So far, the only public sign that the cuts reached the games side is one LinkedIn post. PocketGamer.biz reports that Licia Prehn, who worked in HR at Finnish studio Next Games, wrote that she is leaving the company.
“You all likely saw the news from Netflix yesterday. As a result, I will be leaving the company. I have truly loved working for Next Games and Netflix, and getting to work with such incredible people every day,” Prehn posted.
Netflix bought Next Games in 2022. The company hasn’t said how many Next Games staff are affected, or how many games jobs are part of the 1,000. One departure confirms that the games business was touched. It doesn’t show how deep the cuts go.
What the memo says
“Team — we wanted to share that we are making a number of organizational changes and, as a result, we’ll be letting go of roughly 6% of our colleagues, with the greatest impact to our product, tech, legal and HR teams,” Sarandos and Peters wrote.
“Decisions like these are never easy, and we don’t take them lightly. Our top priority today is to support those who are leaving Netflix,” they added. “The process will vary somewhat by country, but leaders will be connecting with impacted employees soon.”
The cuts weren’t limited to the teams named in the memo. Variety also reports exits on the film and TV side, including Doug Belgrad, a vice president in Netflix’s film division.
Strong revenue, more cuts
Netflix brought in $45.2 billion in revenue in 2025, up 16% year over year, and had about 16,000 full-time employees at the end of that year, according to PocketGamer.biz. Its last major layoff came in 2022, when it cut around 450 jobs after losing subscribers. The company reports third-quarter results on Oct. 20.
The games division has already been shrinking. In August, Netflix moved to shut down its Night School and Moonloot studios. Next Games, a Finnish mobile studio, is one of the studios it still owns.
