Atari has agreed to acquire an 82% stake in Swedish indie publisher and developer Thunderful Games, purchasing shares worth SEK 50 million (around €4.5 million). Thunderful is best known for SteamWorld, Islanders and Lost in Random.
Sadly, a restructuring of the company’s studios will take place following the acquisition.
The purchase is subject to a shareholder vote, scheduled for 28th August, but has already received support of Thunderful’s Board of Directors and the two largest shareholders right now – Owe Bergsten and Brjann Sigurgeirsson – who currently hold 29.9% of the company’s capital and voting rights. The purchase is being made possible by issuing new shares, so their stake and voting rights going forward will be significantly diminished.
Wade Rosen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Atari said, “This Transaction marks another important milestone in Atari’s development with the expansion of its publishing and development capabilities in the European region. Thunderful is recognized for publishing and developing critically acclaimed games, and with the announced transformation plan, as well as the quality and commitment of Thunderful’s teams, we are confident that Thunderful will be returning to a profitable growth path while helping to further develop Atari operations in Europe.”
Thunderful has a complicated business history, but boils down to having started as a merger between indie developers Image & Form (best known for the SteamWorld series) and Zoink (Stick it to the Man!, Fe, Lost in Random), and Swedish retailer and distributor Bergsala in the 2019. In the following years, Thunderful has acquired more developers and publishers, including Headup Games (for a while), Coatsink and others, but the company has struggled in the last couple years. Through 2024, they made layoffs, divested Headup Games, and branched off the distribution businesses to make Thunderful Group a purely game development and game publishing entity, which is what Atari is now acquiring.
Source: GlobeNewsWire
