Are we witnessing the beginning of Atari's comeback story? The legendary game maker is making waves with an extensive aggregation strategy that began in 2023 and culminated in August 2025 with its most ambitious game catalog acquisitions yet: a majority stake in Thunderful Group and five Ubisoft IPs. Reviving Infogram as its publishing label, Atari has positioned itself as a “preservationist publisher ... that can acquire franchises from developers who simply don't have the resources or bandwidth to support them anymore.” 

While other gaming aggregators like Embracer and Stillfront still struggle to create meaningful synergies from their portfolios, Atari sees untapped potential in long-tail premium game management, aiming to "be the best in the world at something." Does Atari's approach make sense, or will it face the same headwinds as previous growth-by-acquisition attempts? Let’s find out.

Breathing New Life into a Half-Century-Old Gaming Company

If you're surprised to hear from Atari in 2025, that's because the company that once dominated video games is well past its heyday. From a $15.7 billion valuation in 2005, Atari went through countless restructurings and questionable pivots, including a shift to cryptocurrency initiated in 2017 and plans for immersive gaming hotels offering AR/VR experiences. (Atari launched the "Atari Token" in 2020 designed to become a universal payment method across the gaming and entertainment industry and facilitate payments within Atari's ecosystem, including gaming, casinos, and betting platforms. It has since lost 99% of its value.) The company is now valued at $94 million, a fraction of its peak.

Following the appointment of its new CEO, Wade Rosen, in April 2021, Atari underwent another strategic reorganization focused on premium games. The company now operates three core business lines: games (82% of revenue), hardware (12%), and licensing (6%). The crypto initiatives have been wound down and folded into the licensing division. Fueled by M&A, Atari's game division has become the company's central focus, maximizing both classic gaming IPs and recent indie catalog acquisitions.

Atari's Business Today: Capturing Value from Hardware and Classic IP Nostalgia

Behind the scenes, Atari has worked hard to capitalize on past successes. It operates a massive portfolio of over 400 gaming IPs created during its golden age or acquired over the years, including early arcade franchises like Pong, Breakout, Asteroid, and Missile Command.

Atari positions itself as the leading classic console maker, using hardware as distribution channels for its IP portfolio. At peak interest for modernized retro consoles, Atari launched the Atari VCS in 2021, a modern home console and PC hybrid designed for both retro and contemporary gaming. Disappointing sales quickly led to a production shutdown. The hardware business line is now primarily collector-driven by the Atari 2600+, a smaller replica of the 1977 console capable of reading original 2600 and Atari 7800 cartridges. 

Atari also acquired competitor Intellivision in 2024 and launched Atari XP, an initiative bringing cartridges back to market. Earlier this year, Atari revealed the Gamestation Go, a Steamdeck-inspired handheld console onboarding more than 100 retro Atari games, confirming the focus on retro versus broader home console ambitions. 

Beyond the Intellivision portfolio, Atari acquired 12 classic IPs from Stern Electronics in March 2023 (including Berzerk and Frenzy), over 100 titles from Accolade in April 2023 (including Bubsy, Hardball, and Demolition Racer), and the M Network Atari 2600 game portfolio in May 2023. 

To monetize these classic games, Atari struck deals with cloud gaming subscription services (Stadia, Luna, Nvidia, Utomik) and invested in Antstream Arcade, a service dedicated to retro games. Given their reduced install base, Atari consoles aren’t significantly expanding software sales; rather, Atari leverages its IP portfolio as one of the key value propositions driving console sales. 

Atari continues making modern games despite modest performance. The company currently operates close to 100 games on Steam across four main categories:

• Recharged series: retro IP remakes (Breakout, Missile Command) with a 16:9 resolution and new soundtracks.
• Classics reimagined: sequels to retro IP with modern gameplay twists (Atari Mania, Pong Quest).
• Atari originals: novel IP productions (Qomp, Days of Doom).
• Atari presents: ports of classic IPs to modern platforms (Hardball, Weird Dreams).

To support its remake and remaster ambitions, Atari acquired development studios Digital Eclipse and Nightdive in 2023. However, a modest performance of this first-party strategy has raised doubts about Atari's ability to generate meaningful value from IP catalogs. Before its acquisition spree, 2023 game division revenues totaled just €7.2 million. Steam performance of games released in the past three years shows consistent marginal sales with no breakout hits. While PC data doesn't tell the complete story for a console-focused publisher like Atari, it does raise questions about the company's ability to properly operate its acquired indie games with strong PC audiences.

Although still unprofitable, Atari has made significant efforts to increase margins by deprioritizing its crypto activities and shifting hardware activities to partnerships and licensing rather than direct manufacturing or sales. Operating income improved from -€12.9 million in FY24 to -€3.9 million in FY25. The company entering the premium publishing realm and acquiring predictable long-tail revenues appears to be a step toward financial reason and decreased risk profile, compared to its years of risky trend chasing and unproven first-party game development. 

Atari has evolved into a niche game publisher, extracting marginal value from retro franchises for a small, dedicated fanbase. Its ventures beyond this scope have produced more misses than hits, though the recent Bubsy sequel gained some online traction. Atari's relevance as a publishing partner will be crucial to assess as it begins acquiring and operating modern indie franchises.

Atari’s New “Preservationist Publisher” Aggregation Strategy

Facing stalling first-party sales, Atari initiated another radical transformation in 2023 through aggressive M&A activity. The company quickly structured a portfolio of more than 30 game IPs under its "preservationist publisher" strategy:

• October 2023: acquisition of Awesomenauts, Swords & Soldiers from Ronimo Games
• April 2024: acquisition of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 publishing rights from Frontier for $7 million
• April 2024: relaunch of the Infogram publishing label to oversee acquired games
• April 2024: acquisition of Totally Reliable Delivery Service from tinyBuild
• June 2024: acquisition of Surgeon Simulator from tinyBuild
• November 2024: Bread & Fred publishing rights acquisition from Sand Castles Studio
• November 2024: Transport Tycoon acquisition from Chris Sawyer
• July 2025: Acquiring a majority stake in Thunderful Group for $5.2 million
• August 2025: Acquiring a catalog of five IPs from Ubisoft

A consistent pattern emerges in Atari's acquisition approach: targeting games widely recognized as cult classics from the early indie era (Awesomenauts, SteamWorld Dig, Surgeon Simulator, Grow Home) with recognizable brands and characters. These are "IPs that have been out for a long time, that people have moved on from," yet they maintain a strong residual community engagement. For example, Awesomenauts has an active Discord community organizing tournaments; SteamWorld Dig has a niche speedrunning community; and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 still sees around 500 concurrent players on Steam.

A unique aspect of Atari's strategy is acquiring IP catalogs and publishing rights rather than entire studios. This minimizes integration challenges and operational costs while vastly limiting risks associated with developing original IPs. The strategy also has become more viable as multiple studios are facing redundancies, closures, and shifts from revenue growth to focusing on profitability. This leads companies to restructure portfolios and consider asset sales for games with limited growth prospects. 

Atari's transactions targeted financially struggling companies: Ronimo filed for bankruptcy before transferring its assets to Atari; Ubisoft is undergoing massive restructuring following years of underperforming releases; and Thunderful experienced two layoff rounds before the sale to Atari. By capitalizing on current market conditions, Atari accessed assets at discount prices while positioning itself as one of the few buyers for long-tail premium game assets.

Atari typically has approached deals through a mix of cash and stock. The acquisition of Digital Eclipse in late 2023 was paid with US$3.8 million in cash and US$2.5 million in newly issued Atari shares. To fund its acquisition spree, Atari raised €30million in 2023 through convertible bonds issued primarily funded by IRATA, Atari’s largest shareholder. Atari has taken on significantly more debt, up from €7.9 million in FY23 to €52.8 million in FY25, leading the company to further dilute shares in August, converting €14 million of debt to equity. This has put Atari under pressure to quickly generate value out of these acquisitions, while paving the way for IRATA to take over and become the majority shareholder.  

Compared to Atari's previous track record, these acquisitions represent a step change, with lifetime sales exceeding Atari's first-party titles by an order of magnitude. To address this, Atari is building cohesive supporting functions around acquired IPs. Infogram serves as the umbrella publishing label, and Thunderful brings in European publishing capabilities, expanding Atari's mostly U.S.-based operations along with extensive development capabilities through Coatsink, Stormfeller Games, Image & Form, Zoink, and Guru Games.

Atari describes its strategy as "preservationist publishing," operating "games or IPs that people wanted to sell because they felt like they shouldn't just disappear." Behind the noble intentions, Atari sees significant potential in long-tail gaming assets. Aggregators acquiring discounted assets to optimize operating margins isn't new, but has traditionally targeted games with strong free-to-play live operation potential (like DECA with mobile or Daybreak with MMORPGs). Atari's approach highlights multiple levers publishers can use to optimize premium game long-tail revenues:

• Franchise expansion: Atari views acquisitions through the brand lens, aiming to develop remasters, remakes, or sequels.
• New distribution channels: Leveraging console publishing expertise and subscription service collaborations to create new revenue streams, including launching Ubisoft Store exclusives on Steam.
• Licensing business: A dedicated licensing division can leverage IP for merchandise, apparel, and themed experiences.
• Commercial andpricing strategy: Having the authority to change business models, update pricing, engage in bundling strategies, and participate in digital storefront sales.

While this revamped strategy appears opportunistic amid flat first-party sales and broader industry challenges, the real question remains whether Atari can successfully manage these games and extract residual revenues. Recent examples of game aggregators struggling to find meaningful operational gains from acquired portfolios serve as cautionary tales.

The Challenging Road to Operational Synergies

Two years into Atari's M&A strategy, we can already examine how they manage acquired games. Awesomenauts, among Atari's first 2023 acquisitions, has little to show after two years. The game was taken down in September 2023 because "when we took over from Ronimo, the game was not in a sustainable state, both economically and technically. We've dedicated time and money into re-engineering the backend services."A preliminary version relaunched in January 2025 with missing DLC content, and a full relaunch followed in June.

With the relaunch, Atari changed the game's business model from free-to-play to premium, with a price tag of $19.99. While the change generated no major backlash, activity has steadily declined since the relaunch. According to Gamalytic, the game sold only 20 units in August. This suggests minimal value generation over two years and signs of community erosion. Given the minimal activity numbers, Atari's decision to commit engineering resources to the game becomes questionable.

Other early acquisitions show no significant changes in player numbers. While Atari included Roller Coaster Tycoon in a recent Humble Bundle, no major pricing or promotion strategy changes have been implemented. While this analysis only covers the PC perspective, the lack of clear plans to release across new consoles or stores suggests similar underwhelming dynamics on consoles. 

So far, Atari hasn't proven any live operation framework to generate value from its newly built portfolio of long-tail games. The minimal scale of these games' activity suggests limited revenue generation opportunities. Atari's CEO emphasizes crafting sequels or remakes, but this raises similar concerns given Atari’s limited internal development capabilities and recent track record. Buying cash flowing assets for cheap makes obvious sense for Atari, but the risks associated with creating new sequels/remakes, especially if the go-to-market strategies around them are different, creates a higher degree of risk that often wouldn't be worth betting on.

It is heartwarming to see all these cult indie game IPs find a new home to secure their legacy, but there are reasons for skepticism about Atari's consolidation strategy. That said, we're still early in the process, and Atari likely hasn't fully deployed its operational strategy. The first slate of sequels and remakes will likely need another year or two to be wrapped up, but their performance will be crucial for assessing the relevance of Atari's initiatives. For now, Atari highlights the existence of a buyer market for long-tail premium game assets with strong IP components or residual community activity. This will likely serve as a new exit option for publishers strategically reviewing and prioritizing their asset portfolios, and Atari is bound to be in the middle of the action.

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In Other News

💸 Funding & Acquisitions:

• AI-powered Pengu app maker Born raises $15M.
• HYS Games raises $300K to accelerate development on its upcoming flagship title.
• Evolite Studio secures $300K to accelerate development of its next game Noor.
• Testronic secures “significant" investment to fuel global growth and expansion.

📊 Business & Products:

• SuperGaming’s MaskGun surpasses 100M players across Android and iOS.
• Azur Games launches an open version of its internal analytics platform.
• Pocketgamerbiz has released its Finland game industry report.
• Ukie partners with Tencent for the second year of the Video Games Growth Programme.
• Merak Capital discusses investor expectations and taking MENA game studios global.

👾 Miscellaneous:

• Atari’s handheld with retro controls is finally available for preorder.
• Why stories sell: The emotional trigger for mobile game players.
• Jam City launches WikiGameJam to create games inspired by Wikipedia.
• Xbox is coming to cars thanks to an LG and Microsoft partnership.
• Code Maestro Launches in public beta as AI copilot for Unity developers.

A Word from Our Sponsor: Lightspeed

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According to InvestGame, founders selected Lightspeed as the #1 lead investor in the gaming industry in 2023 and 2024. Selected portfolio companies include Anthropic, Believer Entertainment, Epic Games, Gardens Interactive, Inworld AI, k-ID, Mistral, Pika Labs, Snap, Suno, Tollbit, Tripledot Studios, Volley, xAI, and 1047 Games.

Lightspeed also hosts the annual CEO Forum at GDC, the annual gathering of gaming, media, and AI CEOs, in partnership with Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. Together with GamesBeat and Nasdaq, the firm runs Game Changers, an annual list that celebrates and accelerates extraordinary gaming and interactive media startups.

The investment team and its Advisory Council combine deep gaming, consumer, and enterprise technology expertise with an international multi-stage investment platform and a culture that puts founders first. 

Content Worth Consuming

Every Game a Platform? Pitfalls and Opportunities in the Gold Rush for User-Generated Content (gamesindustry.biz): “More than ever before, the games industry sustains itself on the backs of its players. Not only in terms of their time and their feedback, but in terms of their creative input as well. All today's biggest games, the likes of Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite, thrive on community creations, using bespoke toolsets, internal distribution systems, and financial incentives to encourage players to build new items, modes, and experiences within that game's particular ecosystem. In doing so, these games have become enormously profitable platforms, and a swathe of other games are rushing to incorporate user-generated content (UGC) into their own business models. Electronic Arts recently revealed that Battlefield 6 would release with a UGC ecosystem called Portal, while battle-royale pioneer PUBG is currently testing its own UGC tools.”

Can AI Generate Worlds and Stories for Games? (Playing With Inference): “Join the ‘Playing with Inference’ podcast as hosts delve into the intersection of generative AI and gaming with special guest Kayla Comalli, co-founder and CEO of Lovelace. In this episode, they explore how AI can generate worlds, stories, and dynamic gameplay. Kayla discusses Lovelace's innovative AI-powered survival game platform and shares insights from her journey from robotics to game development. The conversation also covers the importance of multiplayer and social interaction, the blend of play and creation, and the technical challenges and philosophical nuances of AI-driven game design. Don't miss this engaging discussion about the future of AI in gaming.”

India’s $23B Ban: a Warning for Investors (Game Changers Podcast): “This week, host Jason Chapman unpacks India’s sweeping ban on all online real-money gaming — a dramatic policy shift drawing comparisons to America’s Prohibition era. In just three days, lawmakers passed a bill that effectively wiped out a $23 billion industry, raising urgent questions about regulation, innovation, and investor confidence in one of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies. Behind the ban are concerns about suicide prevention, algorithmic manipulation, and national security. But does the data actually support these claims? And why has the government targeted online gaming while leaving social media — with its far stronger links to youth mental health issues — untouched?”

Is Dead as Disco the Next Big Music Game? ft. Will Cook from Brain Jar Games (GXM Podcast): “What happens when you build a music game with a diverse range of influences spanning [John] Wick, Kill Bill and Batman Arkham Asylum? The answer is Dead as Disco: a neon-drenched beat 'em up where every punch and kick is synced to the BPM of music in the background. On this week's episode of the GXM Podcast, Mat speaks to the studio's CEO Will Cook to learn more about why the studio set out to create a music-based combat game, their experiences working with labels to license music, and finding a place for Dead as Disco in a rapidly evolving rhythm game market.”

Why Most Game Launches Flop(and How to Avoid It) (Building Better Games): “Is there a way to predict whether a game will hit or flop? In this episode, Ben is joined by Colan Neese, who has spent a lot of time looking at how audiences relate to products at companies like Twitch and Nielsen. Colan's work at Mind Game Data is focused on ‘puzzling through the problem of anticipating which games are likely to take off at launch and which seem to be headed nowhere.’ The conversation challenges the conventional wisdom about what drives a successful launch, revealing why our data-driven approaches have been too narrow to anticipate success.”

Chris Dixon on How to Build Networks, Movements, and AI-Native Products(a16z Podcast): “Why do some consumer products explode into networks that reshape the internet, while others fade away? Today on the podcast, a16z general partners Anish Acharya and Chris Dixon take on that question. Anish invests in AI-native consumer products and the next wave of consumer tech. Chris is best known for his work in Web3 and network economies, and he’s also led some of a16z’s biggest consumer bets. Together, they cover the history and power of consumer networks, the exponential forces that shape how they grow, and what it all means for founders building in the age of AI.”

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