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133-562: Firaxis Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Sparks, Maryland . The company was founded in May 1996 by Sid Meier , Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds following their departure from MicroProse , Meier's earlier venture. They were acquired by Take-Two Interactive in August 2005, and subsequently became part of the publisher's 2K label. Firaxis Games is best known for developing

266-593: A database , Voice over IP , or add-in interface software; this is also known as middleware . Examples of this include SpeedTree and Havoc . Independents are software developers which are not owned by (or dependent on) a single publisher. Some of these developers self-publish their games, relying on the Internet and word of mouth for publicity. Without the large marketing budgets of mainstream publishers, their products may receive less recognition than those of larger publishers such as Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. With

399-544: A minority interest in Firaxis Games, to undisclosed terms, in August 1997. By September 1997, Firaxis Games signed life insurances for its three founders. Gettysburg! was released in October 1997 to critical and commercial success, scoring near-perfect reviews from critics, and selling 200,000 copies by August 1999. Starting with Gettysburg! , Firaxis Games prefixed all games designed by Meier with " Sid Meier's ",

532-594: A 50% stake in the publisher, with the intentions to invest 50 million F into creating titles based on Canal+ 's licenses. Infogrames made major purchases for 1999, beginning in March with the purchase of the Gremlin Group for $ 40 million in March, who owned developers Gremlin Interactive and DMA Design ., with Gremlin rebranding as Infogrames Sheffield House. On April 5, Psygnosis ' Paris development studio

665-512: A TV interview, they then used a mix-and-match computer program to suggest other names, one of which was "Infogramme": a portmanteau of the French words "informatique" (information technology) and "programme" (computer program). The final choice, Infogrames, was a slightly modified version of that suggestion. The company logo and mascot is an armadillo ( tatou in French), chosen when the company

798-452: A culture of "toxic geek masculinity" within the workplace. In addition, the conditions behind crunch time are far more discriminating towards women as this requires them to commit time exclusively to the company or to more personal activities like raising a family. These factors established conditions within some larger development studios where female developers have found themselves discriminated in workplace hiring and promotion, as well as

931-461: A deal to potentially purchase MobyGames for $ 1.5 million through to the end of March 2022. The purchase was completed on March 8, 2022, with Freyholtz remaining as general manager. In March 2022, Atari ended all ties with former CEO Chesnais and CBI. The following month, they also announced the termination of all license agreements with ICICB, including the end of hotel licenses, and the dissolution of their blockchain joint venture. The Atari Token

1064-571: A first-party company. As a balance to not being able to release their game for other platforms, second-party developers are usually offered higher royalty rates than third-party developers. These studios may have exclusive publishing agreements (or other business relationships) with the platform holder, but maintain independence so that upon completion or termination of their contracts, they are able to continue developing games for other publishers if they choose to. For example, while HAL Laboratory initially began developing games on personal computers like

1197-410: A fixed period and generally work similar hours as full-time staff members, assisting across all areas of video game development, but as contractors, do not get any benefits such as paid time-off or health care from the employer; they also are typically not credited on games that they work on for this reason. The practice itself is legal and common in other engineering and technology areas, and generally it

1330-403: A game on schedule. The complexity of workflow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within

1463-406: A game's profits. Current examples of first-party studios include PlayStation Studios for Sony, and Xbox Game Studios for Microsoft Gaming . Second-party developer is a colloquial term often used by gaming enthusiasts and media to describe game studios that take development contracts from platform holders and develop games exclusive to that platform, i.e. a non-owned developer making games for

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1596-455: A major publisher. Ocean International consisted of British developer and publisher Ocean Software and its North American division Ocean of America. After the deal was closed, Ocean became a standalone subsidiary of Infogrames and continued releasing its own titles distant from those of Infogrames. Both Ocean subsidiaries soon became the official distributors for Infogrames in both territories. In 1997, Infogrames Télématique launched Oceanline,

1729-537: A maximum of twenty titles. later on in the year, the company purchased the video game division of the Australian-based Beam Software , and rebranded it as Infogrames Melbourne House. On 29 September, Take-Two Interactive purchased DMA Design from Infogrames for US$ 11 million and transitioned it over to their Rockstar Games subsidiary, soon becoming Rockstar North . In December 1999, Infogrames made their then-largest purchase with

1862-531: A month later. On November 7, GameSpot reported that Atari was beginning to run out of money, losing 12 million dollars in the first fiscal quarter of 2008. On 6 March 2008, Infogrames made an offer to Atari Inc. to buy out all remaining public shares for a value of US$ 1.68 per share or US$ 11 million total. The offer would make Infogrames the sole owner of Atari Inc., making it a privately held company. On 30 April, Atari Inc. announced its intentions to accept Infogrames' buyout offer and merge with Infogrames, which

1995-592: A new focus on dealing with re-releases of older titles and the acquisition of companies that deal with the re-release of mainly abandonware video games; it also abandoned its cryptocurrency and casino divisions, which the company had focused on during previous leadership. The company was founded by Bruno Bonnell and Christophe Sapet. They wanted to christen the company Zboub Système (which can be approximately translated to Dick System in English), but were dissuaded by their legal counsel. According to Bonnell in

2128-520: A plan to fully reenter the console and handheld game publishing industry and reduce emphasis on free-to-play and mobile games, leading to possible titles being closed or sold, alongside the closure of Atari Casino. Chesnais later resigned from the company, though remained as a consultant through his new company, Crypto Blockchain Industries (CBI). On November 24, Atari announced they had invested $ 500,000 in retro gaming streaming platform Antstream, and

2261-568: A portfolio of over 100 titles and IPs mostly belonging to Accolade and MicroProse , Atari's Math Gran Prix , Humongous Entertainment 's "Junior Adventure" titles, and the Accolade and GT Interactive brands. Other companies that bought assets were Rebellion Developments purchasing Atari's Battlezone franchise and Humongous title MoonBase Commander , Devolver Digital purchasing Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure , Epic Gear LLC (and later Day 6 Sports Group LLC) purchasing

2394-437: A position in a medium to large video game company. An experienced game-development employee, depending on their expertise and experience, averaged roughly $ 73,000 in 2007. Indie game developers may only earn between $ 10,000 and $ 50,000 a year depending on how financially successful their titles are. In addition to being part of the software industry, game development is also within the entertainment industry; most sectors of

2527-559: A regrouping of "Infogrames' distribution operations in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America." This new entity consisted mainly of Infograme's distribution network in the PAL region . Distribution Partners was 34% owned by Namco Bandai and 66% owned by Atari. Later in May 2009, Namco Bandai acquired Atari Europe from Infogrames. Its sale and marketing personnel were transferred to Distribution Partners. In March 2009, Infogrames announced that it

2660-649: A roundtable discussion with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the professional association for developers. Statements made by the IGDA's current executive director Jen MacLean relating to IGDA's activities had been seen by as anti-union, and Game Workers Unite desired to start a conversation to lay out the need for developers to unionize. In the wake of the sudden near-closure of Telltale Games in September 2018,

2793-510: A separate deal with Atari for the expansion of their Dungeons & Dragons license. On August 22, Atari, Inc. sold Humongous Entertainment to Infogrames Entertainment SA for shares worth US$ 10.3 million . With this, Infogrames laid off all remaining employees at the company and transferred the Humongous assets to a self-owned subsidiary Humongous, Inc. with intentions to sell off the assets outright. Atari would continue to distribute

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2926-407: A single publisher; one canceled game may devastate a small developer. Because of this, many small development companies are short-lived. A common exit strategy for a successful video game developer is to sell the company to a publisher, becoming an in-house developer. In-house development teams tend to have more freedom in game design and content than third-party developers. One reason is that since

3059-403: A strong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) background for women at the secondary education level, but there are issues with tertiary education such as at colleges and universities, where game development programs tend to reflect the male-dominated demographics of the industry, a factor that may lead women with strong STEM backgrounds to choose other career goals. There

3192-627: A trend the three founders carried over from MicroProse, as they believed that Meier's name added more recognizability to their games. For his works on many MicroProse games, as well as Gettysburg! and Firaxis Games' second title, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri , Meier became the second-ever person in the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences 's Hall of Fame, following Shigeru Miyamoto . Co-founder Reynolds left Firaxis Games to pursue his personal interests in February 2000. To compensate his departure,

3325-697: A unique case where nearly all parts of its labor force, including white-collar jobs such as video game development, may engage with labor unions under the Employment Protection Act often through collective bargaining agreements. Developer DICE had reached its union agreements in 2004. Paradox Interactive became one of the first major publishers to support unionization efforts in June 2020 with its own agreements to cover its Swedish employees within two labor unions Unionen and SACO . In Australia, video game developers could join other unions, but

3458-605: A website that would offer simplified online versions of Infogrames titles. On February 3, Infogrames announced that they would purchase the French division of Phillips Media BV for 191.5 million F with the deal closing on June 9. Phillips Media France, in addition to holding a 20% shareholding stake in Infogrames, also owned the distributors Ecudis (France), Leisuresoft (UK), Bomico Entertainment Software (Germany and Holland), and German publisher Laguna Video Games. Leisuresoft

3591-514: A whole remained under its name, and became a holding company for the Atari assets. Atari, Inc.'s majority shareholder was California U.S. Holdings, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Infogrames Entertainment SA. and had exclusive publishing and sublicensing in North America to release titles from Infogrames or its subsidiaries, including Atari Interactive. In September 2003, Atari announced

3724-482: Is also a significant gap in racial minorities within the video game industry; a 2019 IGDA survey found only 2% of developers considered themselves to be of African descent and 7% Hispanic, while 81% were Caucasian; in contrast, 2018 estimates from the United States Census estimate the U.S. population to be 13% of African descent and 18% Hispanic. In a 2014 and 2015 survey of job positions and salaries,

3857-449: Is expected that this is meant to lead into a full-time position, or otherwise the end of the contract. But more recently, its use in the video game industry has been compared to Microsoft 's past use of " permatemp ", contract workers that were continually renewed and treated for all purposes as employees but received no benefits. While Microsoft has waned from the practice, the video game industry has adapted it more frequently. Around 10% of

3990-533: Is generally illegal, companies often target their oldest workers first during layoffs or other periods of reduction. Older developers with experience may find themselves too qualified for the types of positions that other game development companies seek given the salaries and compensations offered. Some of the larger video game developers and publishers have also engaged contract workers through agencies to help add manpower in game development in part to alleviate crunch time from employees. Contractors are brought on for

4123-494: Is still their primary activity they are generally described as "publishers" rather than "developers". Developers may be private as well. In the video game industry , a first-party developer is part of a company that manufactures a video game console and develops mainly for it. First-party developers may use the name of the company itself (such as Nintendo ), have a specific division name (such as Sony's Polyphony Digital ) or have been an independent studio before being acquired by

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4256-474: Is usually conducted in a casual business environment, with t-shirts and sandals as common work attire. Many workers find this type of environment rewarding and pleasant professionally and personally. However, the industry also requires long working hours from its employees (sometimes to an extent seen as unsustainable). Employee burnout is not uncommon. An entry-level programmer can make, on average, over $ 66,000 annually only if they are successful in obtaining

4389-653: The Backyard Sports franchise, Wargaming purchasing the Total Annihilation and Master of Orion franchises, and Stardock purchasing Star Control . The Test Drive franchise and publishing rights to the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise were also put up for sale, although no bids were offered for either franchise. In October, Eden Games reopened as an independent developer by its founder, David Nadal. In 2014, all three of

4522-463: The Civilization and XCOM series, as well as many other games bearing Meier's name. Firaxis Software was founded on May 1, 1996, by Sid Meier , Brian Reynolds and Jeff Briggs , three video game designers formerly employed by MicroProse , a video game venture founded by Meier and partner Bill Stealey in 1982. The name "Firaxis", a portmanteau of "fiery" and "axis", was derived from

4655-596: The Driver franchise were sold to Ubisoft for $ 21.6 million. On September 1, Atari, Inc. announced that its stock faced delisting from the Nasdaq stock exchange due to its price having fallen below $ 1.00. On September 5, 2006, David Pierce was appointed as new CEO of Atari, replacing Bruno Bonnell . Pierce previously worked as an executive at Universal Pictures , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , Sony Pictures , Sony Music , and Sony Wonder . On October 2, Shiny Entertainment

4788-582: The V-Rally series to BigBen Interactive with an announcement of a new entry in the franchise from the latter. On 19 September, THQ Nordic announced they had acquired the Alone in the Dark franchise and Act of War . In March 2020, Wade Rosen, the founder of Ziggurat Interactive, became the new chair of the board of directors upon purchasing a substantial share of the company from Chesnais. Within that year,

4921-659: The AFL–CIO writing an open letter to video game developers encouraging them to unionize. In January 2020, Game Workers Unite and the Communications Workers of America established a new campaign to push for unionization of video game developers, the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), in January 2020. Initial efforts for CODE were aimed to determine what approach to unionization would be best suited for

5054-592: The Accolade , MicroProse , GT Interactive, and Infogrames catalogues that were formerly owned by Tommo/Billionsoft. This included the Bubsy series and the Accolade and GT Interactive brands. The copyright and trademarks of these titles transitioned to a holding business named GT Interactive, LLC. In May, the company obtained rights for over a dozen M Network games, including Armor Ambush , Astroblast , Frogs and Flies , Space Attack , and Star Strike . Within

5187-793: The Atari and MicroProse brands and titles such as Civilization , Falcon , RollerCoaster Tycoon , Centipede , Missile Command , and Pong , MicroProse's owned developers, the Games.com web portal, third-party video game licenses including Thomas the Tank Engine , Family Feud and various Namco properties, as well as a fifteen-year licensing deal to develop and publish titles based on Hasbro IP such as Dungeons & Dragons , Monopoly , Mr. Potato Head and My Little Pony , with an option for an additional 5 years based on performance. The deal did not include Avalon Hill , which

5320-564: The Atari Group moniker, is a French holding company headquartered in Paris that owns mainly video gaming related interactive entertainment properties. Atari SA's core subsidiaries include the publisher and marketer Atari, Inc. , developers Nightdive Studios and Digital Eclipse , and publisher Infogrames, It also has a blockchain division, Atari X, and additionally owns the websites MobyGames and AtariAge . Through these divisions,

5453-456: The International Game Developers Association (IGDA), are conducting increasing discussions about the problem; they are concerned that working conditions in the industry cause a significant deterioration in employees' quality of life. Some video game developers and publishers have been accused of the excessive invocation of "crunch time". "Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch

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5586-516: The MSX , they became one of the earliest second-party developers for Nintendo, developing exclusively for Nintendo's consoles starting with the Famicom, though they would self-publish their mobile games. A third-party developer may also publish games, or work for a video game publisher to develop a title. Both publisher and developer have considerable input in the game's design and content. However,

5719-528: The Me Too movement and have tried to address the symptoms of these problems industry-wide, the video game industry has yet to have its Me Too-moment, even as late as 2021. There also tends to be pay-related discrimination against women in the industry. According to Gamasutra 's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014, women in the United States made 86 cents for every dollar men made. Game designing women had

5852-504: The Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union doing work for video games struck several major publishers, demanding better royalty payments and provisions related to the safety of their vocal performances, when their union's standard contract was up for renewal. The voice actor strike lasted for over 300 days into 2017 before a new deal was made between SAG-AFTRA and

5985-565: The World Trade Center Institute in March 2011. In November 2004, Infogrames , at the time owner of the Civilization franchise and parent to the series' publisher, sold all intellectual property (IP) to an undisclosed buyer for US$ 22.3 million . The buyer was announced to be Take-Two Interactive on January 26, 2005. The publisher announced that the franchise would be managed by their 2K label, which

6118-497: The video game industry . He told the Los Angeles Times : "Someone who was part of the co-creation of that world and those characters isn't getting a credit or a nickel for the work they put into it. Maybe we need unions in the video game industry to be able to protect creators." Infogrames Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment SA ( French pronunciation: [ɛ̃fɔɡʁam] )), also known under

6251-467: The 2008 fiscal year the company posted €51.1 million ($ 72.17 million) in net losses and for the 2009 fiscal year, which ended in March, Infogrames posted losses of €226.1 million ($ 319.33 million). During their fiscal year meeting in May 2009, IESA announced that it would be changing its corporate name to an Atari branded name, in line with the use of the name for its subsidiaries. In reference to this, Atari, Inc.'s CEO Jim Wilson said: "We've gotten rid of

6384-407: The Atari brand would focus within a core 18-34-year-old male audience, while children's and casual games would retain the Infogrames banner. In April 2002, the company's Japanese division Infogrames Japan K.K. signed a Japanese distribution deal with Konami for select titles and soon relaunched the Atari brand in the country with the publication of Splashdown , TransWorld Surf and V-Rally 3 in

6517-623: The Dark , a 3D horror adventure game , to international attention. By 1995, Infogrames was held by many shareholders, including a 20% stake from Pathé Interactive (joint-venture between Phillips Media and Chargeurs ) and 3.3% by Productions Marcel Dassault. By August, Phillips Media acquired Chargeurs' stake in Pathé Interactive, which led to the 20% shareholding stake of the company transferring fully over to Phillips. In 1996, Infogrames embarked on an acquisition campaign that would last seven years and cost more than $ 500 million;

6650-545: The Hunt Valley Business Community. The deal, assisted by broker William W. Whitty Jr. of MacKenzie/O'Conor, Piper & Flynn Commercial Real Estate Services, was expected to be completed by March that year. The company had 13 employees at the time. Firaxis Software announced their first title, Sid Meier's Gettysburg! , in June 1997. Interimly, on July 24, 1997, the company was legally renamed Firaxis Games. Electronic Arts announced to have acquired

6783-446: The IGDA found that people of color were both underrepresented in senior management roles as well as underpaid in comparison to white developers. Further, because video game developers typically draw from personal experiences in building game characters, this diversity gap has led to few characters of racial minority to be featured as main characters within video games. Minority developers have also been harassed from external groups due to

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6916-492: The Infogrames and Atari duality, the confusion around that. We are one simplified company, under one management team, under one brand." Infogrames' 29 May earnings report stated: An earnings press release on 24 July 2009 also provided clarification regarding the ensuing name change that was initially announced some two months prior, rebranding themselves as Atari, SA from Infogrames Entertainment, SA. Furthermore, this release also stated their intentions of henceforth utilising

7049-581: The Intellivision catalog on the system. On 26 June 2024, Infogrames acquired the Surgeon Simulator IP from tinyBuild. On 1 November 2024, Atari acquired Transport Tycoon from Chris Sawyer and was followed with Infogrames acquiring the publishing rights to Bread & Fred from Apogee Entertainment . Information about developers owned by Atari, Inc. and Atari Interactive are listed on their pages. As of 2018, Atari SA owns

7182-600: The North American Atari subsidiaries emerged from bankruptcy under the ownership of Frédéric Chesnais, who headed the slimmed-down companies with their entire operations consisting of a staff of 10 people. Atari announced in March that they had entered the social casino gaming industry with the launch of Atari Casino. In 2015, Atari announced a new turnaround strategy that would focus on "download games, MMO games, mobile games and licensing activities, based in priority around traditional franchises." Projects within

7315-535: The acquisition of Activision Blizzard , stated it supported these unionization efforts. After this acquisition, the employees of Bethesda Game Studios , part of Zenimax under Microsoft, unionized under the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in July 2024. Over 500 employees within Blizzard Entertainment 's World of Warcraft division also unionized with CWA that same month. Sweden presents

7448-439: The acquisition of a 70% stake in publisher GT Interactive Software for $ 135 million, and assumed GT's $ 75 million bank debt. IESA justified the purchase by stating that GT Interactive provided Infogrames with a "distribution network for all of its products in the United States, as well as a catalog of products that includes Driver , Duke Nukem , Oddworld , Unreal Tournament and Deer Hunter . The deal also included

7581-414: The acquisition saw a great opportunity for Firaxis Games in terms of creative development and marketing capabilities, and were fortunate to have re-gained full control over the Civilization franchise. In April 2007, Soren Johnson , lead designer on Civilization IV , left the company to move to Maxis and work on Spore . Similarly, Civilization V 's lead designer Jon Shafer departed following

7714-572: The advent of digital distribution of inexpensive games on game consoles, it is now possible for indie game developers to forge agreements with console manufacturers for broad distribution of their games. Other indie game developers create game software for a number of video-game publishers on several gaming platforms. In recent years this model has been in decline; larger publishers, such as Electronic Arts and Activision, increasingly turn to internal studios (usually former independent developers acquired for their development needs). Video game development

7847-400: The appeal hearing took place on May 1, 2008. Atari was expected to raise its value to $ 15 million USD from the period of December 20, 2007 through to March 2008. Atari received notice of its absolute delisting on September 12, 2008. In September 2008, Namco Bandai Games and Infogrames formed a joint venture called Distribution Partners . Distribution Partners was defined by Infogrames as

7980-431: The closest equity, making 96 cents for every dollar men made in the same job, while audio professional women had the largest gap, making 68% of what men in the same position made. Increasing the representation of women in the video game industry required breaking a feedback loop of the apparent lack of female representation in the production of video games and in the content of video games. Efforts have been made to provide

8113-476: The closure of MicroProse's UK studio, then named Infogrames Chippenham. On October 2, the company closed Infogrames Lyon House. and on October 22, had acquired the remaining 80% of Eden Studios for $ 4.1 million,. In the fiscal year of 2002, IESA had a net loss of $ 67 million on revenues of $ 650 million, and in 2003 the net losses increased to $ 89 million. On January 30, 2003, Infogrames sold their Mac publishing division MacSoft to Destineer . On May 1,

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8246-597: The closure of the Hunt Valley (the former headquarters of MicroProse) development studio. and Legend Entertainment On October 2, following the closure of Sheffield House, Atari sold a majority of Gremlin Interactive's catalogue alongside their brand, logo and trademark, to Zoo Digital Publishing , a then-new publisher founded by Gremlin co-founder Ian Stewart. On December 18, Atari announced that they would shutter Legend Entertainment in January 2004. Atari continued to close and sell off franchises in 2004. On March 30,

8379-713: The closure of their Santa Monica and Beverly publishing offices and that publishing would be reassigned to their main North American offices in New York City . On May 2, after signing a new deal with Firaxis Games , 2K announced that they had fully acquired from Atari the full Civilization and prior back catalog of titles. They also announced that they had acquired the publishing rights to the then-recent Sid Meier's Pirates! . On June 9, Hasbro announced they had purchased back Atari's exclusive digital gaming rights to their properties for $ 65 million. As part of

8512-432: The company had operations in 50 countries and 17 dedicated offices. In December 2008, Infogrames bought Cryptic Studios for $ 26.7 million in cash plus performance bonuses. Cryptic Studios is a massively multiplayer online game developer and its acquisition is in line with the company's new business strategy which focuses on online games. Despite restructuring, Infogrames continued to struggle to become profitable. For

8645-617: The company launched the Atari Token Cryptocurrency the Atari Token was launched by Atari, in equal partnership with the ICICB Group. The group was licensed to launch an online gaming platform using crypto currencies, including the Atari Token. Also, Ziggurat Interactive acquired dozens of ex-Atari-owned titles, including Deadly Dozen . In March 2021, Atari extended its partnership with ICICB Group for

8778-433: The company owns the rights to many video game properties that originated from Accolade , Atari, Inc. , Atari Corporation , GT Interactive, M Network , Intellivision and others. It is the sole owner of the Atari brand since 2001, through its subsidiary Atari Interactive Inc. which licenses the brand to other entities in the group. Infogrames published numerous video games during the 1990s and eventually became one of

8911-592: The company shuttered its Minneapolis development studio, formerly WizardWorks, and announced that its titles such as the Deer Hunter franchise would transition off to Atari Interactive. On July 29, 2004, Epic Games announced that it had ended its publishing agreement with Atari, Inc. for the Unreal , and instead signed a new three-game publishing deal with Midway , beginning with Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict in 2005. Atari would continue to publish

9044-653: The company shuttered the Infogrames Sheffield House development studio. On 7 May 2003, Infogrames officially reorganized all its subsidiaries under the Atari banner. Its two publishing divisions in the United States - Infogrames, Inc., based in Santa Monica (the former GT Interactive) which handled a majority of the company's "core" titles such as Enter the Matrix , Dungeons and Dragons (including Neverwinter Nights ) and other movie tie-ins,

9177-544: The company started hiring various industry veterans by March 2000. For his executive engagement at Firaxis Games, co-founder and chief executive officer Briggs was named "CEO of the Year" by Smart CEO Magazine in October 2004. Briggs later left the company in November 2006, and was succeeded by Steve Martin. Also for his executive work at Firaxis Games, Martin was awarded the "Maryland International Business Leadership Award" by

9310-400: The company's titles for a period until March 2006, and was later extended to March 2007. During this period, Atari's most profitable titles in the North American market were Dragon Ball games , which accounted for the largest share of Atari's earnings at the time. Infogrames through the remainder of 2006 sold intellectual properties and some studios in order to raise cash and stave off

9443-848: The company. COO Heather Hazen was promoted to replace Martin. On May 30, 30 employees were laid off from Firaxis as part of cost-saving measures implemented by parent company Take-Two Interactive. Video game developer A developer may specialize in specific game engines or specific video game consoles , or may develop for several systems (including personal computers and mobile devices ). Some focus on porting games from one system to another, or translating games from one language to another. Less commonly, some do software development work in addition to games. Most video game publishers maintain development studios (such as Electronic Arts 's EA Canada , Square Enix 's studios, Activision 's Radical Entertainment , Nintendo EPD and Sony's Polyphony Digital and Naughty Dog ). However, since publishing

9576-516: The company. In June 2016, at the Games for Change festival, Firaxis Games announced that they had partnered with GlassLab to develop CivilizationEDU , an educational derivative of Civilization V optimized for classrooms. On July 23, 2018, David Ismailer of 2K confirmed that Firaxis Games was working on a new IP. On February 17, 2023, it was announced that Midnight Suns creative director Jake Solomon and longtime Firaxis boss Steve Martin were exiting

9709-416: The console manufacturer (such as Rare or Naughty Dog ). Whether by purchasing an independent studio or by founding a new team, the acquisition of a first-party developer involves a huge financial investment on the part of the console manufacturer, which is wasted if the developer fails to produce a hit game on time. However, using first-party developers saves the cost of having to make royalty payments on

9842-543: The console. According to an official company statement of 22 June 2017 the product was to initially launch via a crowdfunding campaign in order to minimize financial risk to the parent company. In March 2018, the Ataribox was renamed the Atari VCS and it was released in June 2021. It was developed by a new subsidiary based in the U.S., named Atari VCS, LLC. Within the same month, it was revealed that Atari had also sold

9975-508: The console. This established the use of licensing fees as a model for third-party development that persists into the present. The licensing fee approach was further enforced by Nintendo when it decided to allow other third-party developers to make games for the Famicom console, setting a 30% licensing fee that covered game cartridge manufacturing costs and development fees. The 30% licensing fee for third-party developers has also persisted to

10108-426: The day of the announcement of is departure IESA's shares jumped 24%. In the same year, Infogrames fired the majority of Atari's directors and laid off 20% of its workforce. For the 2006–2007 fiscal year, Atari posted a net loss of $ 70 million. In July 2007, Atari sold their exclusive licensing deal with Hasbro back to them for $ 19 million, which concluded with Hasbro signing a new casual game deal with Electronic Arts

10241-444: The developer if the game is not meeting expectations. When each milestone is completed (and accepted), the publisher pays the developer an advance on royalties . Successful developers may maintain several teams working on different games for different publishers. Generally, however, third-party developers tend to be small, close-knit teams. Third-party game development is a volatile sector, since small developers may depend on income from

10374-534: The developers SingleTrac , Humongous Entertainment , Cavedog Entertainment , WizardWorks , MacSoft , Legend Entertainment and Reflections Interactive ; Infogrames began the new millennium of 2000 with a new identity and branding, while in February GT closed down Cavedog Entertainment as part of its restructuring. In June, The company invested another $ 30 million in GT Interactive, and renamed

10507-417: The developers are the publisher's employees, their interests align with those of the publisher; the publisher may spend less effort ensuring that the developer's decisions do not enrich the developer at the publisher's expense. Activision in 1979 became the first third-party video game developer. When four Atari, Inc. programmers left the company following its sale to Warner Communications , partially over

10640-512: The development of Atari branded hotels, with the first hotels to be constructed in Dubai , Gibraltar and Spain . The licensing agreement includes potential additional countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia. In April, Rosen replaced Chesnais as CEO and restructured the company into two units: Atari Gaming, who will focus on video games, and Atari Blockchain, who will focus on blockchain and other businesses. On July 5, 2021, Atari Gaming announced

10773-467: The entertainment industry (such as films and television ) require long working hours and dedication from their employees, such as willingness to relocate and/or required to develop games that do not appeal to their personal taste. The creative rewards of work in the entertainment business attracts labor to the industry, creating a competitive labor market that demands a high level of commitment and performance from employees. Industry communities, such as

10906-433: The existing Unreal back catalog. On November 25, 2004, Infogrames Entertainment SA announced they had sold the Civilization franchise to an undisclosed buyer for $ 22.3 million., In January 2005, it was revealed that the buyer for the Civilization franchise was Take-Two Interactive , who acquired distribution rights to the then-upcoming title Civilization IV under their 2K label. On February 10, Atari announced

11039-572: The first video game-specific union, Game Workers Unite Australia, was formed in December 2021 under Professionals Australia to become active in 2022. In Canada, in a historic move, video game workers in Edmonton unanimously voted to unionize for the first time in June 2022. In January 2023, after not being credited in The Last of Us HBO adaptation, Bruce Straley called for unionization of

11172-464: The following week CEO Fred Chesnais confirmed the company was developing a new game console – the hardware was stated to be based on PC technology, and be still under development. In mid July 2017 an Atari press release confirmed the existence of new hardware, referred to as the Ataribox . The casing design was inspired by the original Atari 2600 , with a ribbed top surface, and a rise at the back of

11305-444: The franchise. On January 3, 2017, TMZ reported that Frontier Developments , the developer for RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 , sued Atari, Inc. for not paying the company enough for royalties for the game; Frontier reported that they only received $ 1.17 million when they needed $ 3.37 million. Frontier's Chief Operating Officer David Walsh confirmed the report in a GameSpot interview, stating that they had previously attempted to resolve

11438-406: The game's release, in December 2010. In August 2014, Firaxis Games announced Firaxicon, a convention dedicated to Firaxis games. The event was held from September 27 to 28, 2014, at a hotel in Hunt Valley, and included meet and greets with the company's staff, a presentation titled "An Evening with Sid Meier", and early playtests of Civilization: Beyond Earth . A tour of Firaxis Games' offices

11571-404: The gaming industry, while a 2017 IGDA survey found that the female demographic in game development had risen to about 20%. Taking into account that a 2017 ESA survey found 41% of video game players were female, this represented a significant gender gap in game development. The male-dominated industry, most who have grown up playing video games and are part of the video game culture , can create

11704-457: The industry by working long hours. Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception. The use of crunch time as a workplace standard gained attention first in 2004, when Erin Hoffman exposed

11837-488: The issue without legal action since April 2016. In 2017, Piko Interactive acquired several titles from Atari: 40 Winks , Bubble Ghost , Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess , Death Gate , Drakkhen , Eternam , Glover , Monty Mole , Hostage: Rescue Mission , Marco Polo and Time Gate: Knight's Chase . On June 8, a short teaser video was released, promoting a new product; and

11970-431: The lack of respect that the new management gave to programmers, they used their knowledge of how Atari VCS game cartridges were programmed to create their own games for the system, founding Activision in 1979 to sell these. Atari took legal action to try to block the sale of these games, but the companies ultimately settled, with Activision agreeing to pay a portion of their sales as a license fee to Atari for developing for

12103-404: The largest video game companies in the world through an acquisition policy. However, later, as Atari SA, it dealt with continuing pressures and difficulty finding investors which led to the company seeking bankruptcy protection under French law in January 2013 while subsidiaries in the United States sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as well. Since 2020, the company has seen a turnaround with

12236-483: The latter part of 2023, the company also formed a partnership with and made a minority investment into Playmaji, Inc. the company behind the Polymega retro console, acquired AtariAge , a website dedicated to the history of Atari games, Awesomenauts and Swords & Soldiers from Ronimo Games and Digital Eclipse , a developer that specialized in remakes of older games. On April 2, 2024, Atari re-purchased

12369-559: The movement again called out for the industry to unionize. The movement argued that Telltale had not given any warning to its 250 employees let go, having hired additional staff as recently as a week prior, and left them without pensions or health-care options; it was further argued that the studio considered this a closure rather than layoffs, as to get around failure to notify required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 preceding layoffs. The situation

12502-433: The much more recognisable 'Atari Group' moniker with all Atari-related brands and similar such subsidiaries already under their control. On 21 October 2010, Atari announced Atari's reference shareholders BlueBay Value Recovery (Master) Fund Limited and BlueBay Multi-Strategy (Master) Fund Limited are exploring a disposal of the shares and equity-linked instruments held by them. However, BlueBay shareholders later interrupted

12635-731: The name of a piece of music created by Briggs. Briggs explained that they decided to stay in the Baltimore area , rather than moving to Silicon Valley , because it was "just a great place to be". Unlike MicroProse, Firaxis Software aimed at being a "design house", leaving manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of their games to outside contractors. As such, the company talked to six potential video game publishers for their games, and finally signed an agreement with Electronic Arts , through which their games would be distributed under Electronic Arts' Origin Systems label. The studio's opening

12768-448: The nature of the video game culture. The industry also is recognized to have an ageism issue, discriminating against the hiring and retention of older developers. A 2016 IGDA survey found only 3% of developers were over 50 years old, while at least two-thirds were between 20 and 34; these numbers show a far lower average age compared to the U.S. national average of about 41.9 that same year. While discrimination by age in hiring practices

12901-533: The new label. Atari also took a 7.9% ownership stake in tinyBuild around the same time. On May 23, Atari announced the acquisition of the Intellivision brand name and its game library from Intellivision Entertainment. This respective company and the Amico console were not included in the sale, and would be renamed. The company would secure a licensing deal with Atari to continue to release updated versions of

13034-540: The news, there have typically been followup discussions towards the potential to form a union. A survey performed by the International Game Developers Association in 2014 found that more than half of the 2,200 developers surveyed favored unionization. A similar survey of over 4,000 game developers run by the Game Developers Conference in early 2019 found that 47% of respondents felt the video game industry should unionize. In 2016, voice actors in

13167-501: The objective was to become the world's leading interactive entertainment publisher. While the company's debt increased from $ 55 million in 1999 to $ 493 million in 2002, the company's revenue also increased from $ 246 million to $ 650 million during the same period. In July 1996, the company announced that it would purchase the British-based holding company Ocean International Ltd. for $ 100 million, beginning Infogrames' status as

13300-694: The present, being a de facto rate used for most digital storefronts for third-party developers to offer their games on the platform. In recent years, larger publishers have acquired several third-party developers. While these development teams are now technically "in-house", they often continue to operate in an autonomous manner (with their own culture and work practices). For example, Activision acquired Raven (1997); Neversoft (1999), which merged with Infinity Ward in 2014; Z-Axis (2001); Treyarch (2001); Luxoflux (2002); Shaba (2002); Infinity Ward (2003) and Vicarious Visions (2005). All these developers continue operating much as they did before acquisition,

13433-414: The primary differences being exclusivity and financial details. Publishers tend to be more forgiving of their own development teams going over budget (or missing deadlines) than third-party developers. A developer may not be the primary entity creating a piece of software, usually providing an external software tool which helps organize (or use) information for the primary software product. Such tools may be

13566-703: The publisher as Infogrames, Inc. On June 30, Infogrames purchased developer Paradigm Entertainment for $ 19.5 million and placed them within Infogrames, Inc. operations. and soon afterwards purchased in-flight games developer Den-o-Tech Int. (DTI) for $ 5.6 million, renaming them as Infogrames DTI. Infogrames was also one of the interested companies in purchasing Eidos Interactive . On December 6, 2000, board game manufacturer Hasbro announced that they would sell their struggling Hasbro Interactive division to Infogrames for $ 100 million, $ 95 million as 4.5 million common shares of Infogrames and $ 5 million in cash. The deal included all of Hasbro Interactive's product library,

13699-429: The publisher's wishes generally override those of the developer. Work for hire studios solely execute the publishers vision. The business arrangement between the developer and publisher is governed by a contract, which specifies a list of milestones intended to be delivered over a period of time. By updating its milestones, the publisher verifies that work is progressing quickly enough to meet its deadline and can direct

13832-415: The publishers. While this had some effects on a few games within the industry, it brought to the forefront the question of whether video game developers should unionize. A grassroots movement, Game Workers Unite , was established around 2017 to discuss and debate issues related to unionization of game developers. The group came to the forefront during the March 2018 Game Developers Conference by holding

13965-439: The publishing rights to RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 from Frontier Developments as part of RollerCoaster Tycoon' s 25th anniversary, giving Atari full publishing control of the series once more. Later that month, Atari relaunched the Infogrames brand as a second publishing label to publish titles outside the main Atari brands, along with the acquisition of Totally Reliable Delivery Service from tinyBuild , to be published under

14098-483: The region. On April 25, Infogrames purchased Shiny Entertainment from the struggling Interplay Entertainment for $ 47 million, alongside the exclusive publishing rights to publish games based on The Matrix . On August 28, Infogrames purchased the remaining shares in OziSoft for $ 3.7 million and rebranded the distributor as Infogrames Australia and Infogrames New Zealand. On September 12, 2002, Infogrames announced

14231-452: The restructuring of the debt and capital structure of the Atari group. As part of the agreement, the €20.9 million Credit Facility Agreement was extinguished via €10.9 million loan forgiveness from BlueBay Value Recovery (Master) Fund Limited and Atari's payment of €10 million; the cancellation of the dilutive effect of the ORANEs held by BlueBay; €20 million capital increases to be submitted to

14364-639: The sale process of its holding in Atari. BlueBay later converted the conversion of a portion of the ORANEs held by them. On April 4, 2012, Glu Mobile acquired the Deer Hunter franchise from Atari. On April 12, Eden Games began negotiations as an attempt to separate from Atari SA following a prior strike after Atari laid off a majority of the studios' employees the prior April. On September 28, Atari, SA, BlueBay Value Recovery (Master) Fund Limited, and The BlueBay Multi-Strategy (Master) Fund Limited reached an agreement following their negotiations regarding

14497-540: The sale, Hasbro purchased back the video game rights to the Transformers , My Little Pony , Tonka , Magic: The Gathering , Connect Four , Candy Land and Playskool franchises and brands, while Atari would obtain a seven-year exclusive agreement to produce video games based on select Hasbro board games, including Monopoly , Scrabble , The Game of Life , Battleship , Clue , Yahtzee , Simon , Risk and Boggle . Hasbro also secured

14630-696: The same day, the company announced a two-year distribution deal with Canal+ Multimedia to distribute the company's titles in the UK, France and Germany. Later on in the year the company purchased the distributors ABS Multimedia, Arcadia, and the Swiss Gamecity GmbH and ending the year off with the purchase of a 62.5% in Australian game distributor Ozisoft , following its then-recent relinquishment from Sega . On February 10, 1999, Infogrames extended its partnership with Canal+ Multimedia by purchasing

14763-532: The strategy included Alone in the Dark: Illumination , RollerCoaster Tycoon World , and a mobile game based on Lunar Lander . On December 14, 2016, fellow-French publisher Bigben Interactive announced they had purchased the Test Drive franchise from Atari. The deal allowed for BigBen to publish new installments in the franchise, while Atari would retain all rights to previous entries in

14896-589: The studio down. On May 23, Atari announced that they would sell their game assets, developers, the famous "Fuji" logo, and the Atari name in a bankruptcy auction. Prior to the bankruptcy sale in July, Nordic Games purchased the Desperados franchise and Silver on June 24 while Appeal Studios purchased the full rights to Outcast on July 4. The company's bankruptcy sale took place on July 22, 2013, leading to different titles gaining new homes. A majority of Atari's assets were sold to Tommo , which included

15029-545: The target of sexual harassment. This can be coupled from similar harassment from external groups, such as during the 2014 Gamergate controversy . Major investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that went unchecked by management, as well as discrimination by employers, have been brought up against Riot Games , Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard in the late 2010s and early 2020s, alongside smaller studios and individual developers. However, while other entertainment industries have had similar exposure through

15162-586: The threat of bankruptcy. On May 10, 2006, the company began their sales of their studios and properties with the sale of the Games.com website to AOL , Paradigm Entertainment and the Stuntman franchise to THQ and the publishing rights to TimeShift to Vivendi Games . The sales generated $ 25 million in revenue. On June 17, Midway acquired the back publishing rights to the Unreal back catalog from Infogrames and Atari. In July, Reflections Interactive and

15295-484: The toxic nature of the video game culture. This racial diversity issue has similar ties to the gender one, and similar methods to result both have been suggested, such as improving grade school education, developing games that appeal beyond the white, male gamer stereotype, and identifying toxic behavior in both video game workplaces and online communities that perpetuate discrimination against gender and race. In regards to LGBT and other gender or sexual orientations,

15428-487: The use of crunch time at Electronic Arts , a situation known as the "EA Spouses" case. A similar "Rockstar Spouses" case gained further attention in 2010 over working conditions at Rockstar San Diego . Since then, there has generally been negative perception of crunch time from most of the industry as well as from its consumers and other media. Game development had generally been a predominately male workforce. In 1989, according to Variety , women constituted only 3% of

15561-508: The video game industry typically shares the same demographics as with the larger population based on a 2005 IGDA survey. Those in the LGBT community do not find workplace issues with their identity, though work to improve the representation of LGBT themes within video games in the same manner as with racial minorities. However, LGBT developers have also come under the same type of harassment from external groups like women and racial minorities due to

15694-678: The video game industry. Whereas some video game employees believe they should follow the craft-based model used by SAG-AFTRA which would unionize based on job function, others feel an industry-wide union, regardless of job position, would be better. Starting in 2021, several smaller game studios in the United States began efforts to unionize. These mostly involved teams doing quality assurance rather than developers. These studios included three QA studios under Blizzard Entertainment : Raven Software , Blizzard Albany , and Proletariat; and Zenimax Media 's QA team. Microsoft , which had previously acquired Zenimax and announced plans to acquire Blizzard via

15827-745: The vote of Atari shareholders (of which €10 million with preferential subscription right). On 21 January 2013, the North American divisions of Atari SA - Atari, Inc., Atari Interactive, Inc., Humongous, Inc. and California US Holdings, Inc. all filed petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The following week on January 29, Eden Games filed for judicial liquidation , effectively closing

15960-504: The workforce in video games is estimated to be from contract labor. Similar to other tech industries, video game developers are typically not unionized . This is a result of the industry being driven more by creativity and innovation rather than production, the lack of distinction between management and employees in the white-collar area, and the pace at which the industry moves that makes union actions difficult to plan out. However, when situations related to crunch time become prevalent in

16093-406: Was acquired by Foundation 9 Entertainment for $ 1.6 million. The last studio put up for sale - Atari Melbourne House, was sold to Krome Studios in November, and was renamed to Krome Studios Melbourne. Atari retained ownership of Eden Games , while Infogrames still held the assets of Humongous, Inc. In April 2007, Infogrames' founding chairman Bruno Bonnell left the company after 24 years; on

16226-566: Was also held at the event. The event was renewed for a second edition in July 2015, and held on October 3, 2015, at the Baltimore Convention Center . Events were similar to that of the 2014 event, with XCOM 2 and Civilization: Beyond Earth – Rising Tide up for early testing. By December 2015, Firaxis Games expanded their Sparks headquarters, which they moved to in 2009, to 40,000 square feet (3,700 m), and employed 40 new staff, totaling to 180 employees present at

16359-536: Was announced on June 24, 1996. Firaxis Software was originally located in a 2,500-square-foot office on Gilroy Road in Hunt Valley, Maryland , temporarily sharing office space. To accommodate their growth, in February 1997, they announced that they were moving their corporate headquarters to a 7,200-square-foot office suite in Executive Plaza III, an office building at 11350 McCormick Road and part of

16492-668: Was argued to be "exploitive", as Telltale had been known to force its employees to frequently work under "crunch time" to deliver its games. By the end of 2018, a United Kingdom trade union, Game Workers Unite UK, an affiliate of the Game Workers Unite movement, had been legally established. Following Activision Blizzard 's financial report for the previous quarter in February 2019, the company said that they would be laying off around 775 employees (about 8% of their workforce) despite having record profits for that quarter. Further calls for unionization came from this news, including

16625-475: Was completed by October 9. With that acquisition Infogrames was the only owner of the Atari brand. Infogrames said that it planned to reduce administrative costs and to focus on online gaming. On May 9, 2008, it was revealed that NASDAQ would be removing Atari from the NASDAQ stock exchange. Atari has stated its intentions to appeal the decision. Atari was notified of NASDAQ's final decision on April 24, 2008, and

16758-499: Was disclaimed as "unlicensed" and a replacement would be developed. In 2023, Atari began a series of IP acquisitions. In March, they acquired the intellectual property rights to 12 Stern Electronics titles, including Berzerk and Frenzy . Later that month, Atari announced that it would acquire Nightdive Studios for $ 10 million. Nightdive had released several ports and remasters of Atari's divested games. The following month, they had re-acquired over one hundred video games from

16891-545: Was founded the day before, and that Firaxis Games would stay in charge of the series' development. In March 2005, NDL announced a partnership with Firaxis Games, wherein their Gamebryo engine would be used for the development of Civilization IV , which was to be released later that year. On November 7, 2005, Take-Two Interactive announced that they had acquired Firaxis Games. Through the deal, Firaxis Games became part of 2K, although its present management and development plans would stay intact. Meier and Briggs both expressed that

17024-494: Was getting out of the distribution business in the PAL region with its decision to sell its 66% stake at Distribution Partners. According to an Infogrames press-release, this sale allowed "Atari to focus its financial resources and creative energy exclusively on developing and publishing online-enabled games". In July, the deal valued at €37 million was completed; Distribution Partners was renamed to Namco Bandai Partners . At that time

17157-582: Was however not included in the sale, and was shuttered following the purchase. On January 30, 1998, Infogrames signed a licensing deal with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to publish and develop five titles based on the Looney Tunes franchise. On February 8, Infogrames rebranded its subsidiaries under its own banner, with Ocean Software becoming Infogrames United Kingdom, Ocean of America becoming Infogrames Entertainment, Inc. and Bomico Entertainment Software becoming Infogrames Deutschland. On

17290-473: Was moved to Villeurbanne . Bonnell commented: "This dinosaur [ sic ] is our symbol. The armadillo has always survived changes to its environment, from the melting of glaciers to the worst of heat waves." In the late 1980s, Infogrames was noted for its French computer games that often featured original game ideas and occasionally humorous content. They had acquired several licences for popular Franco-Belgian comics . In 1992, they released Alone in

17423-494: Was purchased. The company's first major purchase of the year came on April 20, with the purchase of publisher Accolade for $ 60 million in order to gain a major North American distribution network. Accolade was rebranded as Infogrames North America, with the company's former North American distribution arm (the ex-Ocean of America) being folded into it. On June 24, the company extended its Looney Tunes licensing deal with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for five years, with

17556-869: Was rebranded as Atari, Inc. , and Infogrames Interactive, Inc., based in Beverly, Massachusetts, which focused on children's and casual titles such as games based on the Dragon Ball franchise and their Hasbro license, was renamed Atari Interactive, Inc. , merging with the previously existing Atari Interactive, Inc. which held all rights to the Atari brand. Other subsidiaries that rebranded included Infogrames Australia Pty, Ltd. rebranding as Atari Australia Pty, Ltd. , Infogrames United Kingdom Limited rebranding as Atari United Kingdom Limited, Infogrames Europe rebranding as Atari Europe and development studio Infogrames Melbourne House Pty Ltd becoming Atari Melbourne House Pty Ltd. The Infogrames Entertainment SA company as

17689-433: Was retained by Hasbro. The deal was closed on January 29, 2001, and Hasbro Interactive was rebranded as Infogrames Interactive, Inc. On October 2, 2001, Infogrames announced that they would reinvent the Atari brand as a second major publishing label with the launch of three new games featuring prominent Atari branding on their boxarts: Splashdown , MX Rider and TransWorld Surf . Infogrames titles released under

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