Atari purchases MobyGames for $1.5 million

Atari announced yesterday it purchased MobyGames for $1.5 million from Blue Flame Labs. The move comes after strategic deals announced last year regarding the retro game streaming service Antstream as well as MobyGames.

With last year’s deal, Atari had the option to purchase MobyGames in March of 2022 as reported by GamesIndustry.biz. Clearly, Atari has decided to pursue that option.

“The MobyGames community has played a sustained and important role in the documentation, celebration, and preservation of video games, and supporting MobyGames allows us to give back to the community and contribute to its growth and success,” remarked Atari CEO Wade Rosen in the official press release.

“It’s important to Atari that MobyGames retains every bit of its integrity, and we’re committed to supporting the site in ways that improve the experience for both contributors and users.”

With acquisitions like these, there are naturally going to be concerns regarding management changes. Fortunately, it sounds like the site’s general manager and owner of Blue Flame Labs, Jeremiah Freyholtz, who’s run MobyGames since 2013, will remain in that position moving forward.

Commenting on the acquisition, Freyholtz noted on the MobyGames website:

For those unfamiliar with MobyGames, the site launched in 1999 and has served as an encyclopedic catalog of data on games across a variety of platforms ever since. It features a wealth of information on games categorized by company, platform, year released, genre, and more.

For more on the acquisition of MobyGames by Atari, be sure to read through the press release and the post from Freyholtz on the MobyGames website. For more on Atari, we also recommend taking a peek at our Atari VCS interview with COO Michael Artz!