Infogrames Entertainment has finalized an agreement with Cryptic Studios, Inc. In the deal, all of Cryptic's proprietary IP, tools, technology, and work-in-progress goes to Infogrames along with all of Cryptic's employees and management team. In this acquisition Infogrames, which also owns Atari, secures a highly successful and competent MMO development house. Cryptic is perhaps best known as the developer of the City of Heroes franchise. Lately it has been working on two new titles: Champions Online and Star Trek Online. A third, unannounced title, is also included in the deal. Cryptic is led by a highly experienced management team who shares Atari’s vision in online gaming and who has committed to stay with the group. Cryptic employs approximately 150 professionals, comprising leading industry creative, technical and operation experts with a proven track record in delivering on-time, on-budget titles. Cryptic’s revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008 amounted to USD 17 million. Atari will benefit from Cryptic’s powerful proprietary engine, scalable content development tools and online server architecture to deliver very high productivity-per-employee and industry-leading client/server performance and create unique, high quality MMO games on 18 to 24-month cycles. Atari will also gain a proven set of high-quality MMO game operating tools for sophisticated customer service and account management. David Gardner, CEO of Infogrames, the parent company of Atari, said: “The acquisition of Cryptic Studios brings to Infogrames an outstanding creative organisation, with a proven track-record of success in the fast-growing MMO category. Cryptic’s success is founded on leading-edge technology and the vision of a seasoned executive management team. I am impressed with the tools and technology that Cryptic has developed to make MMOs less expensive to build. Creating vast worlds and interesting interactions can be very people intensive but with the use of Cryptic's toolset they have a proven way of cutting average production costs in half. This is exactly the type of company we wanted to acquire in order to build Atari for the 21st century.” “We share a common vision with Atari and their leadership team.” said John Needham, Chief Executive Officer of Cryptic Studios, “With our game development and online platform technology skills, we’re very excited about the opportunities that this unique combination with Atari creates. I am committed to helping Atari grow into a leading online game company and look forward to being part of the team.”

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