Founder Albert Yarusso has announced that AtariAge, a storefront and community hub, will be sold to Atari themselves. Albert will remain as an employee of Atari to continue running the site and store.
It’s not something I’d expect to see happen from the Atari as it was just a few years ago. However, since the current CEO Wade Rosen took the helm, they’ve been making a huge push at reconnecting with the past glory of the company. They’ve even gone as far as publishing new games for the Atari 2600, which is something that AtariAge has been doing for a long time now with their homebrew scene.
Currently, it sounds like everything is going to remain the same in terms of the forum and storefront. Atari isn’t going to suddenly own everybody’s homebrew projects. Some homebrew developers are currently attempting to port their work over to the Atari VCS, and the announcement goes further to say that “There’s also the possibility of original homebrew games being released in physical form under the Atari label if they do well in the AtariAge Store.”
More importantly, however, Yarusso says that this change will allow them to restore some form of normalcy to their life after spending so many years keeping things going.
Community-slash-database
This isn’t the first community-slash-database that Atari has bought in recent years. In 2022, Atari purchased MobyGames, which still remains the most comprehensive community-built database on the internet. They’ve since revamped the site, and as a longtime MobyGames user-slash-community member, I think it looks and functions pretty well.
Moreover, the company has been rather aggressive in building back up its publishing arm and tapping into its current IPs through licensing and reproduction. While they still have a toe dipped into blockchain technologies, that is seeming more and more like a side-project compared to tapping into their history. I’ve never been a tremendous fan of Atari and have no real connection with the Atari 2600 console, but I can’t help but be intrigued by the company’s actions as of late.
Yarusso has been clear in saying that nothing will change at AtariAge in the short term. Some users are understandably concerned despite reassurances. Like Atari in general, there’s reason to be optimistic, but still a lot to be proven.
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