God of War art director Raf Grassetti recently announced that he was leaving Santa Monica Studio, but did not disclose where he’d be going at the time. He’s now come out and talked about his new home, revealing that he would be working on a new IP over at Netflix Games.
Raf Grassetti is joining a Netflix team with other industry veterans
Grassetti revealed the move on Twitter, stating that he loves making games and that he’s “not going away anytime soon.” He noted that he will be joining the team led by Chacko Sonny, who left Blizzard Entertainment in September 2021. Some anonymous sources told Bloomberg that Sonny was a “stabilizing force” and “well-respected” within the studio.
Longtime Halo director Joseph Staten also left Microsoft in April to join Sonny’s team. Staten is known for working on many games at Microsoft from Halo 2 to Sunset Overdrive. Jerry Edsall is also part of this developer, and he was previously at The Coalition making Gears of War 4 and Gears 5, as well as Xbox Game Studios. Edsall left Microsoft in April and joined Netflix Games in May.
Grassetti joined Santa Monica Studio in 2013 after getting hired at Sony the year prior. He had previously worked as a senior character artist at BioWare for Mass Effect 3 and its many pieces of DLC.
Not much is known about this AAA new IP, but previous job listings have implied that it will be a shooter of some kind that has potential of being “worthy of a Netflix film/TV series.” It also called for applicants to have “extensive experience” with live service games.
