The Queen’s Gambit – Picture: Netflix
We’ll soon be coming up on two years since The Queen’s Gambit landed on Netflix which scored numerous accolades for Netflix becoming one of their most-watched limited series of all time and turning a huge audience into lovers of chess. A season 2 isn’t on the way but could a game be? A new trademark filing suggests it might.
Filed on March 2nd, 2022, the new trademark in question is simply for “The Queen’s Gambit” but where it gets interesting for us is the fact that under goods and services is listed “Downloadable game software”.
If that’s not on the nose enough, the secondary goods and services listed are for the following:
“Entertainment services, namely, providing online computer, electronic and video games; providing temporary use of non-downloadable interactive games”
That all but confirms that a game surrounding Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit is on the way to Netflix Games. But what could the game be?
Smart money, of course, would be a heavily branded Chess game clone complete with visualizations and perhaps even voice lines from the Netflix show itself.
The game won’t nearly have quite the same thunder as when the series first came out. In November 2020 it was reported that sales of Chess Boards were surging and that traffic to the website Chess.com ballooned.
That surge in traffic led to Chess.com taking advantage of the newfound popularity in Chess by offering new opponents in the form of Beth Harmon at certain points in her life for you to play against.
Those bots were eventually disabled in January 2021, however.
Chess.com Beth Harmon bots visualization
Of course, beyond a trademark filing there’s no official confirmation that anything is on the way from Netflix just yet. With gaming set to be an increasingly big part of Netflix’s future (they’ve bought three studios in under 6 months), we’d expect to see many games tie-ins moving forward.
You may be wondering whether Netflix can even produce a Chess game. Chess is largely considered to be in the public domain although there’s still plenty of debate around other aspects of copyright and the game.
With the exception of two Stranger Things entries, Netflix’s gaming efforts thus far has mostly relied on pulling in new IP and games from other gaming studios. Whether that’s from the likes of Krispee Street from FrostyPop Games to Shatter Remastered from PikPok or Asphalt Xtreme from Gameloft.
Would you be looking to jump back into the world of Chess on Netflix should they release a new game? Let us know in the comments.