Atari SA

Michael leads the firm's gaming and digital media practice and has advised on some of the most impactful transactions of the last two decades.

Most recent deals include the sale of Track Racer to Corsair, Hipster Whale to Atari, Ready Player Me to Netflix, and Ektra Games to Zynga.

Each of those deals tells a story about a very different phase of the industry's evolution, and one that landed under very different market conditions.

Drake Star's Q2 2026 report landed a few months ago, and the headline is surprising.

NCSoft has been expanding significantly kind of in the mobile space, which was a new category for them.

KRAFTON continues to be very active.

And I mean, we just saw the company Hipster Whale, known for Crossy Road, to Atari.

Yeah.

Like Resident Evil 2, 3, 4 are completely different to RE 2, 3, 4 back in the day.

Um, and then you have like the Atari approach, Digital Eclipse's approach, which is take the actual code...

Or Nightdive, sorry, as well.

They're both under Atari, Digital Eclipse and Nightdive.

Take original game's code and add additional lines to, you know, something like The Thing remaster that we got, uh, last year, which I love, by the way.

Um, they took the original game's code and, uh, and added 200...

The Atari name has had a tumultuous history since its heyday bringing video games into North American homes in the 1980s.

The brand passed through multiple publishers and holding companies in the 90s and 2000s and is now owned by Luxembourg-based Atari SA, formerly the French-based company Infogrames.

In the 2010s, owner Frederick Chesney attempted to revive the brand by engaging in deeply unsavory businesses, including gambling and blockchain, according to a report by GamesIndustry.biz, as well as proposing a chain of Atari-themed hotels.

In 2021, the company split in two, with American investor Wade Rosen taking over the gaming division, while Chesney focused on other ventures, including a new Atari token cryptocurrency.

they're

owned by Atari now but they're they do all the remasters of a lot of like boomer shooters and stuff but they're working on a thief remaster

Oh, cool.

It's funny, because I just bought it on GOG, but then I saw they announced the remaster, and I was like, oh, I'll just

The company keeps growing on all of this stuff.

They become, in 1998, the third largest by revenue video game company in the business behind Electronic Arts and Infogrames.

They rise to be like a $600 million company or something like that, which is pretty crazy.

But there's underlying problems.

We did an episode or two on them and talked about their crazy acquisition spree in this time period.

based on all the telecom and dot-com deregulation stuff that was spurring overvaluation of the stocks of French media and game companies.

Infogrames completes a $100 million purchase right at the end of the year in December.

Well, they enter into agreement for the purchase right at the beginning of December 2000, right at the end of the year, for $100 million, $95 million in stock, $5 million in cash.

And then there's a new roller coaster tycoon with a much more cartoony art style.

And one of the little mascot characters you can have running around is Bubsy because it's being made by Atari.

Get

your Bubsy out of my game.

I think they did...

Did they do Roller Coaster Tycoon or no? That was Atari.

I don't know.

But Microprose, dude.

Very cute.

And I'm hoping that Moby Games, you know, 'cause Moby Games has kicked around a couple of times since I helped with it, and now it's over at Atari, so I'm hoping that Atari will be good stewards of, of, of Moby Games in the future.

Yeah.

I guess we'll find out.