After Netflix pulled the rug from under Monument Valley 3 six months after launch, its developer says it's a 'PC first' studio: 'we can build more direct relationships with our audience and community'

(Image credit: Ustwo Games)

Monument Valley was an award-winning phenomenon on mobile back in 2014 that made its way to PC eventually, as did its sequels and several other games by its developer, Ustwo. That studio has now apparently moved on from mobile-first development, as CEO Maria Sayans recently told Mobile Gamer.

"What has changed more recently is shifting our focus to 'PC first' in our future titles," Sayans said, "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."

The trigger for this was Monument Valley 3, which initially came out exclusively on Netflix, being removed from the service a mere half a year after launch. "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," she said, "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."

So yeah, unsurprising that Ustwo wants to move away from a platform so likely to yank the ground from underneath them without notice. Rather than making games for Netflix and Apple Arcade first and porting them later, the studio wants to make its games multiplatform from the get-go, with launches on PC as step one. "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," Sayans said.

If, like me, you only know Ustwo for Monument Valley—a pleasant puzzle game about mazes made of Escher-esque optical illusions, with snacky levels well-suited to phones—the studio is also responsible for a surreal turn-based tactics game set inside someone's mind as well as a nature-loving photo safari that's helping the environment in the real world.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.