Atari Reveals Plans To Fully Acquire Nightdive Studios

gameranx.com:

Atari will be acquiring Nightdive Studios.

As a brief reminder, this Atari is not the original Atari founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. This company was originally known as InfoGrames and it was founded in France in 1983.

I won’t go through the whole history here, but InfoGrames acquired Atari’s trademarks and library when it acquired Hasbro Interactive in 2001. A subsidiary of InfoGrames renamed itself to Atari Inc, but in 2008, InfoGrames fully acquired this subsidiary, to completely change its name to Atari SA.

This Atari has been attempting several non-video game related ventures, including hotels and NFTs, but it does remain a video game publisher. Another studio it had previously owned was Cryptic Studios, who made games like Star Trek Online and Neverwinter.

Nightdive Studios, launched in 2012, and headquartered in Eastern Vancouver, Washington, has made it a specialty of rereleasing classic games, mainly 2000s era shooters, but the way it has done so is somewhat unusual, and maybe the reason Atari became interested in acquiring them.

Nightdive takes the effort to acquire the rights to the games themselves, if at all possible, and if there is a rights holder, they work out the deal to get the game back in circulation. They work also combines part video game preservation, as they deliberately work to recover the original code of the games, or try to recreate them when they can.

If you find this move unusual, there is something you need to know. Wade Rosen, who is Atari’s CEO and chairman, is also a big believer in Nightdive Studios. Wade personally bought 13 % of Nightdive’s stock under his trust, before deciding to have his company buy the whole company.

This move will likely not affect the