Atari, or not less than the corporate at the moment holding the rights to make use of that title, introduced earlier this week that it had spent $1.5 million shopping for MobyGames, an internet site most of you’ve got in all probability used at one level or one other in your lives with out ever excited about its financial value.
The positioning, based in 1999, is mainly an enormous database for online game credit, and is the closest factor the trade has to a central credit register since publishers themselves are so notoriously horrible at protecting monitor of such issues. It’s additionally, very quietly, an ideal repository of high quality screenshots for retro/pixel artwork video video games.
Initially created by three highschool mates (Jim Leonard, Brian Hirt and David Berk), this isn’t the primary time the location has been bought; it controversially modified palms in 2010 when GameFly purchased it and redesigned the entire website, earlier than it was bought once more in 2013 by Jeremiah Freyholtz, who rapidly reverted most of these unpopular modifications. Freyholtz, together with Simon Carless, has been working the location ever since.
Whereas individuals are understandably sceptical concerning the sale, thus far each Atari and Freyholtz have been saying all the appropriate issues:
“The MobyGames neighborhood has performed a sustained and vital function within the documentation, celebration and preservation of video video games and supporting MobyGames permits us to provide again to the neighborhood, and contribute to its development and success,” stated Atari CEO Wade Rosen. “It’s vital to Atari that MobyGames retains each little bit of its integrity, and we’re dedicated to supporting the location in ways in which enhance the expertise for each contributors and customers.”
“In Atari, MobyGames has discovered a accomplice that can present the funding and help we have to full long-planned website enhancements,” stated Jeremiah Freyholtz, Common Supervisor MobyGames. “I’m assured this transition will enable MobyGames to stay an vital community-driven mission, and that Atari’s involvement greatest positions us for long-term stability and success.”
Atari’s buy launch says that Freyholtz “will stay in his function as Common Supervisor”.
