generated: '2026-08-26'
method: searched
source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/19/netflix-acquires-gaming-avatar-maker-ready-player-me/, https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/netflix-acquires-ready-player-me-games-avatar-creation-1236612915/,
  DNS probe of readyplayer.me (2026-08-26)
specification: API Commons Lifecycle
specificationVersion: '0.1'
provider: Ready Player Me
providerId: ready-player-me
status: retired
description: 'The Ready Player Me public developer platform is RETIRED. Netflix acquired Ready Player Me in December
  2025 and the public surface — the hosted Avatar Creator, PlayerZero, and the developer APIs at api.readyplayer.me
  — was shut down on 2026-01-31. As of 2026-08-26 the retirement is complete at the DNS layer: readyplayer.me publishes
  MX and TXT records but no A record, and api.readyplayer.me, docs.readyplayer.me and studio.readyplayer.me are
  all NXDOMAIN. Avatars already exported as .glb/glTF files continue to work offline in game engines; anything that
  resolved an avatar or asset at runtime no longer does.'
retirement:
  announced: '2025-12-19'
  announcement_basis: Acquisition reported 2025-12-19 (TechCrunch, Variety). Ready Player Me's own shutdown notice
    was published on readyplayer.me / docs.readyplayer.me, both of which have since been removed from DNS, so the
    provider's first-party notice is no longer retrievable.
  service_end: '2026-01-31'
  dns_removed_observed: '2026-08-26'
  acquirer: Netflix, Inc.
  successor: none published — the technology moved inside Netflix products; no public replacement API
  migration_path: none published by the provider
  scope:
  - Hosted Avatar Creator (readyplayer.me)
  - PlayerZero
  - Developer REST APIs (api.readyplayer.me)
  - Developer documentation (docs.readyplayer.me)
  - Studio console (studio.readyplayer.me)
  unaffected:
  - Previously exported .glb / glTF avatar files (local, no runtime dependency)
  - The readyplayerme GitHub organization — 30 public repositories, still reachable 2026-08-26
versioning:
  scheme: path
  observed_versions:
  - v1
  - v2
  policy_published: false
  note: The REST surface carried both /v1 and /v2 path prefixes side by side (e.g. /v1/avatars and /v2/avatars).
    No written versioning policy was captured before docs.readyplayer.me was removed.
deprecation:
  policy_published: false
  sunset_header: unknown
  deprecation_header: unknown
  rfc8594: false
  note: No published deprecation policy and no evidence of RFC 8594 Sunset/Deprecation headers. The API was not
    deprecated through a staged policy; it was withdrawn wholesale on 2026-01-31 alongside the acquisition. No Deprecation
    pointer is emitted in apis.yml because asserting one would credit a policy the provider never published.
sla:
  published: false
status_page:
  published: false
  note: No status page was found and none can now be probed — every readyplayer.me host is NXDOMAIN. No StatusPage
    pointer is emitted.
deprecated_operations:
  note: 'All 23 operations across the three OpenAPI definitions in openapi/ are effectively retired as of 2026-01-31;
    none is individually marked `deprecated: true` in the specs, which predate the shutdown.'
  count: 23
evidence:
- url: https://readyplayer.me/
  status: 0
  detail: curl exit 6 — could not resolve host; apex has MX + TXT but no A record
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://api.readyplayer.me/
  status: 0
  detail: NXDOMAIN (verified against 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1)
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://docs.readyplayer.me/
  status: 0
  detail: NXDOMAIN
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://studio.readyplayer.me/
  status: 0
  detail: NXDOMAIN
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://api.github.com/orgs/readyplayerme
  status: 200
  detail: organization live, 30 public repos, org record updated 2026-04-07
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/19/netflix-acquires-gaming-avatar-maker-ready-player-me/
  status: 200
  detail: acquisition report, 2025-12-19
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=docs.readyplayer.me/ready-player-me/api-reference
  status: 200
  detail: Wayback holds a 2025-06-16 snapshot of the API reference; the snapshot BODY could not be retrieved from
    this run (web.archive.org unreachable from the probe host, one attempt, not retried), so the archived reference
    was not used to enrich this artifact.
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ready-player-me/
  status: 404
  detail: 404 on two attempts with browser User-Agents. LinkedIn also 404s anonymous crawlers on live pages, so
    this is recorded as an observation, NOT treated as confirmed dead — the LinkedIn pointer was left in apis.yml.
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://twitter.com/readyplayerme
  status: 200
  detail: live
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://www.youtube.com/@readyplayerme
  status: 200
  detail: live
  checked: '2026-08-26'
- url: https://discord.com/invite/readyplayerme
  status: 200
  detail: live
  checked: '2026-08-26'
pointers_removed_from_apis_yml:
- https://readyplayer.me/ (Portal)
- https://readyplayer.me/developers (Portal)
- https://readyplayer.me/hub (Portal)
- https://readyplayer.me/blog (Blog)
- https://studio.readyplayer.me/ (Portal)
- https://docs.readyplayer.me/ (Documentation)
- https://docs.readyplayer.me/ready-player-me/api-reference (Documentation, x2)
- https://docs.readyplayer.me/ready-player-me/integration-guides (Documentation)
- https://docs.readyplayer.me/ready-player-me/api-reference/rest-api/assets (Documentation)
- https://docs.readyplayer.me/ready-player-me/api-reference/rest-api/users (Documentation)
pointers_removed_note: '11 pointers asserting pages the provider no longer serves were removed from apis.yml on
  2026-08-26. humanURL and baseURL were LEFT in place on each apis[] entry: they are the historical identity of
  the contract rather than link-property claims, and removing them would leave the entries without an anchor. Both
  are known dead.'