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Atari Facing $291 Million Debt Claim From... Atari
An anonymous reader writes "Atari declared bankruptcy earlier this year, and part of that process involves selling off its property in order to pay as many entities holding its debt as possible. The latest round includes a $30 million claim from Atari's parent company in France, and a $261 million claim from another subsidiary of that parent company. The $30 million debt is secured (in other words, they get priority on whatever's left in the U.S. Atari's coffers), but the $261 million debt is not, so they'll have to wait in line with everybody else."
The article also lists some interesting sell-offs. The old Accolade brand got sold for $50,000, the Battlezone Franchise was sold to Rebellion Interactive for $566,500, and Wargaming World Limited purchased the Total Annihilation and Masters of Orion franchises. Stardock Systems, creators of Sins of a Solar Empire, picked up the rights to the Star Control franchise, which they intend to reboot. (Those who played it will recall that StarCon2 was the Best Game Ever. And it's been remade after the creators released the source code.)
new star control game?!
ANYONE?!
World of Tanks is pretty fun. Master of Orion is a completely different kind of game. Hope they can manage it okay. I'd love a decent sequel.
And who owns the old atari rights now days?
I think it's been a lot of spinoffs / buyouts over the years.
Atari owned the rights to make D&D based computer rpg's does that right get sold or returned to hasbro or is it under another branch of atari? If it is under this branch of atari what happens to the lawsuit against beam dog over the baldurs gate enhanced edition that is holding up the android and linux ports from being released.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Atari subsidiary company: $261 million
$30 million plus $261 million equals $291 million worth of debt owed to Atari entities
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
A fun fact is that neither of the two Ataris suing each other here are in any reasonable sense the original Atari. First of all, the original company split in 1984 due to financial difficulties, into two companies: 1) Atari Games, which owned the rights to the classic game IP; and 2) Atari Computer, which took over making actual hardware.
Atari Games existed for a few year in the mid-'80s, but in the late '80s went defunct, getting bought up by Time Warner, which later became AOL, which later sold them to Midway Games, which was later acquired by Warner Bros. So it's basically a copyright holding company owned by some group of investors that is several degrees of separation removed from anyone who actually worked on an Atari game.
Atari Computer initially did some interesting stuff, mostly notably putting out the Atari ST, and later the Atari 7800. They sort of tanked in the late-'80s/early-'90s though, when the Atari Lynx and the Atari Jaguar both fell hugely short of expectations. This half of the company then met the same fate as Atari Games: it de-facto ceased to exist, except as IP that got sold around between various companies that never had anything to do with its products, in this case Hasbro and Infogrames. And now two parts of this half are suing each other.
The short version of the story is: Atari got split up in 1984, was defunct by 1993, and now two, of at least three, companies that own some kind of claim to the name "Atari" are suing each other, but none of them have anything to do with Atari, except insofar as they are leeches who've somehow ended up with the rights to exploit the trademark.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
How much for the 3D Tic Tac Toe franchise?
So Stardock got the rights for Star Control but _not_ Master of Orion? I wonder if they were outbid, or decided to pass on it since they have Galactic Civilizations, their own decently reviewed and decently selling turn based 4x space game. They can always make GalCiv 3 not that they've passed on the opportunity to make MoO 3 (it's too bad no one ever made a third MoO game before) but even after all this time i think perhaps the MoO name might have given them some cachet (and thus sales) that GalCiv wouldn't get.
:)
As for Star Control, despite the issues with the original release of Elemental i have a moderate amount of faith in Stardock's ability to handle the game well, but they've demonstrated themselves to be both credible as a developer (Galactic Civilizations, Political/Corporate Machine) and as a publisher (Sins of a Solar Empire with Ironcald Games.) So i wonder if they're going to develop this game themselves, or farm it out to someone else. Someone like, i dunno, Toys for Bob?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Well, yeah, look at blockbuster. They were bought, took on a billion dollars of their parent company's debt, then spun off with crippling loan payments.
Keep an eye on Planetary Annihilation.
So if I want to rip off and steal investors and bank money all I have to do is create 3 shell companies move the debt around and pretend they are 3 entities then declare bankruptcies on all 3 where I get first dibs on my own debt. Then keep all the money again to myself since I get first dibs. Meanwhile pensioner and investor funds get screwed.
Is there any ethics left or did I misinterpret this story? This should be illegal as none of us us individuals can do this with credit card debt as that of course would be irresponsible. But not here if it is for corps
http://saveie6.com/
Last I heard, Wargaming was in talks to buy Gas Powered Games, I don't know if that's still a thing. However, if it does go through, there is a pretty good chance it could happen.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
In complete agreement -- Star Control II was the best game ever. I normally don't fan-spam on /. but dagnabbit I just had to chime in.
Of course, someone should take odds on whether or not a reboot can come close to doing as well as the orignal (the original #2 that is.. StarCon was a fine but simplistic game and StarCon 3 did not exist. IT DID NOT EXIST I TELL YOU). Still, I'll play a sequel just on the chance it comes close.
Total Annihilation was one of my faves as well... along with absolutely everything Atari did in the 80s. How the mighty have fallen.
Does anyone know who bought the franchise for Desert Bus?
http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/desert-bus-worst-videogame-time-160542705.html
That was a classic.
> "Stardock Systems, creators of Sins of a Solar Empire, picked up the rights to the Star Control franchise, which they intend to reboot."
Sins of a Solar Empire was created by Ironclad Games and published by Stardock. Stardock has developed their own games in the past, but let's give credit where credit is due: it belongs to Ironclad Games. It's sad that publishers get more credit and name recognition than developers these days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire
to the Baldur's Gate franchise. Beamdog is basically in a holding pattern because Atari told them to cease and desist for now, which is holding up the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate 2.
Also note that Ironclad isn't working with Stardock on the follow up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_Dark_Age
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Best 16 bit pc ever. I shed a tiny tear whenever I think about that machine and the Laser C compiler I got for it.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Planetary Annihilation is the technical and spiritual successor to both SC and TA. SC2 was made by Square Enix (oh god why, I can hear you say), but strangely the original designer of both TA and SC, Chris Taylor, claimed responsibility (or at least support) for its deviations from the core formula (most notably unit upgrades and noncontinuous resource gathering.) The goal was to simplify; the result was to alienate the only audience the brand had ever drawn; the lesson was for the next game—Planetary Annihilation, which to my knowledge doesn't include Chris Taylor but does have some GPG staff behind it—to return to TA's core qualities.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
It doesn't matter. Jack Tramiel's Mastercard limit is $230M.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
http://www.incgamers.com/2013/07/open-source-star-control-2-team-express-doubts-over-atari-ip-sale
Apparently they only got the trademark to the name "Star Control" and the copyright to Star Control 3. Unless the license the Star Control 2 content as well, we might get something very different with the Star Control name slapped on.
Is StarCon2 anything like Atari's Star Raiders? I really miss that and BallBlaster.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Also check out springrts.com. It was inspired by TA. It is an engine with several clones of TA to choose from, plus new unrelated stuff. Open Source.
I don't have much to add other than I'm hugely excited for both Star Control and Battlezone. SC1 and SC2 were bedrock mainstays of my college days, and the hover-tank Battlezone released in 1998 was phenomenal.
I've since moved on to play and enjoy The Ur-Quan Masters, but even shortly after SC2's heyday and before UQM was available, I remember paying for a legit download of the PC version of the game (late '98, early '99?). If we could get network mode Melee, I'd be tickled pink. If there were a persistent universe game (ala EVE) formed out of the Star Control franchise I'd lock myself away in a room and never see the light of day again.
However I've never found a comparable game to the '98 Battlezone. The gameplay was terrifically fun, fairly easy to get started, the copy protection was a reasonable compromise (need one disc present among all the computers playing on the LAN), and I cannot remember a single stability, usability, or gameplay bug. I could very much see wasting away many hours if that were updated and brought to market again.
Cyrano de Maniac
Download, [compile], play, and tell us. http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
>It doesn't matter. Jack Tramiel's Mastercard limit is $230M.
The late Jack Tramiel.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
>When I think Atari, I think Atari 2600.
Yeah because the 800 was just so far behind the curve when it was released in 1979. It's hardware was so dated it was continued conceptually in the Amiga (same designer). Bot had sprites, hardware assisted scrolling, display interrupts, multi channel sound and stuff like display lists/copper lists.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
No Blood, though...
As a matter of fact, there's still an active community that plays multiplayer Master of Orion 2 games over the Internet (via dosbox). Anyone interested, check out #moo2 on QuakeNet IRC.
#include <sig.h>
Someone already rebooted Star Control II. It was called Mass Effect. :)
I'm kidding, but seriously, go play Mass Effect 1 and compare it to SC2. There are a LOT of similarities there.
For starters, check this out:
http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Ur-Quan_Kzer-Za
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Thorian
Heck, the thorian's mind controlled minions are even referred to as "thralls"
The Youtube videos don't look anything close.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Seconded. As a TA, SC, SC:FA fan, I'm seriously excited about Planetary Annihilation.
Wargaming acquired Gas Powered Games back in February
.