Atari acquires multiple game properties from Romino, including Awesomenauts
Atari has announced that they’ve acquired a few high-ish profile properties from Romino Games. Notably, these titles include Awesomenauts and Swords & Soldiers.
The press release sounds like those two games were the cream of the crop, but the only other property I really know Romino owns is BlightBound. Awesomenauts is a 2012 MOBA, and is probably the closest I’ve come to enjoying a MOBA. I didn’t, but I almost did. As is common for MOBAs, it had a tonne of DLC cosmetics. It’s still going as a free-to-play title to some extent, but since it’s over a decade old, the player base has cooled, and it’s not as popular as it once was.
Swords & Soldiers was first announced as a WiiWare game back in 2009, and stood out because there was never a whole lot on WiiWare. It was eventually rescued and ported to other platforms. In 2015, it got a sequel, which was Swords & Soldiers II: Shawarmageddon. I never played either title, but now I’ve got a mighty craving for shawarma.
What puzzles me is why Atari wanted these properties. The current version of Atari is going through a period of acquisitions to try and focus its strategy. Part of the strategy is doing smaller budget titles, so these fit that bill, but it’s still interesting that they bought these properties in particular instead of, say, Romino itself. Did Romino need the money, and Atari saw the opportunity? Did key staff move to Atari and want to continue working on their established series? Is CEO Wade Rosen a fan of these games?
I’ve reached out to my person on the inside to see if they can deobfuscate things and will update this article if they get back to me with some interesting information.
