Atari has announced a business deal with Ubisoft, where the former is acquiring several of the smaller-scale IPs owned by the latter. In the announcement, Atari has confirmed that the acquisition includes IP like I Am Alive, Cold Fear, Child of Eden, Grow Home, and Grow Up.
“Millions of players have experienced these worlds over the years, and this will open the door for long time players to revisit those memories while inviting new audiences to discover them for the first time,” said New Business vice president Deborah Papiernik. “Atari has a rich gaming legacy and deep appreciation for these classic titles, we’re excited to see how they’ll evolve and connect with players in fresh, meaningful ways.”
With this acquisition, Atari has stated that it intends to bring back these smaller gaming experiences to a new audience, with releases being planned for current platforms with “renewed publishing frameworks”. Along with re-releasing the games under Atari’s publishing label, the company has also confirmed that it plans to work on expanding the audiences for them with new content and extended distribution channels as well.
“Ubisoft and Atari both have a legacy of crafting worlds that players can fall in love with — games that resonate with generations of players not just for how they played, but for how they made us feel,” Atari chairman and CEO Wade Rosen. “We’re excited to reintroduce these titles while also exploring ways to expand and evolve these franchises.”
For context, all of the IPs acquired by Atari have been dormant for quite some time, with the most recent of the releases being Grow Up, which came out in 2016 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The oldest among these acquired IP is 2005’s Cold Fear, which was originally released on PC, PS2 and Xbox.
Atari has been expanding its portfolio quite a bit. Back in July, the company had announced a deal with Thunderful Group, which ended up with the company becoming an 82 percent of Thunderful Group’s shares and votes. As part of this deal, around €4.5 million worth of shares were issued, amounting to 333,333,334 new ordinary shares. This announcement also came in light of Thunderful Group going through a rough financial period which also resulted in the company laying off around 20 percent of its workforce.
“This transaction marks another important milestone in Atari’s development with the expansion of its publishing and development capabilities in the European region,” said Rosen about the agreement. “Thunderful is recognized for publishing and developing critically acclaimed games, and with the announced transformation plan, as well as the quality and commitment of Thunderful’s teams, we are confident that Thunderful will be returning to a profitable growth path while helping to further develop Atari operations in Europe.”
As for Ubisoft, the French gaming company had recently opened up a new subsidiary with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot’s son Charlie Guillemot taking up the position of co-CEO of this new subsidiary alongside Christophe Derennes. The new subsidiary was founded as part of a €1.16 billion deal between Ubisoft and Tencent.