After buying Nightdive and Digital Eclipse last year, Atari CEO says the company has 'already opened more doors and more opportunities' for both studios

Last year, after a reborn, retro-focused Atari acquired Nightdive Studios for $10 million, the PC remaster specialists tried to reassure fans that the deal was a good fit. «The new Atari is dedicated to the same principles of bringing back classic and classic-style games that Nightdive has always pursued,» Nightdive said. Then in November Atari purchased another retro-focused studio, Digital Eclipse, bringing the two game developers most focused on preserving and reviving gaming history under the same corporate roof.

It's a powerhouse team—but in the midst of massive industry layoffs, also the kind of consolidation that makes me nervous. What if an Embracer-style collapse one day hits Atari? 

I know I'm not the only PC gamer who'd see that as a tragic loss, as no other studios are bringing back games like Dark Forces or building playable documentaries around pioneering games like Karateka. So at last week's Game Developers Conference, I asked Atari CEO Wade Rosen about what happens if the company ends up in dire financial straits, given how many other game companies are currently struggling and doing layoffs.

«We keep all that in mind—we're really trying to balance growth, both organic and inorganic growth, with reaching profitability and being in a sustainable place,» Rosen said. (Inorganic growth refers to mergers or acquisitions like Nightdive/Digital Eclipse). «We feel like we're doing everything we can to make sure we don't reach one of those scenarios and get out over our skis, and that we're able to grow and rebuild the business, but not in a way that's unsustainable.»

Much of the industry's growth since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic has indeed turned out to be unsustainable, with developers commenting on the rising costs of big-budget games and more than 16,000 layoffs affecting industry employees over the last year. Rosen said the «overexpansion» in gaming and tech in 2020 and 2021 was based on «a false sense of what future demand was going to be,»