We’ve been on pins and needles since Atari announced two weeks ago that it was planning to sell off Cryptic Studios. Champions Online and Star Trek Online players were worried about the future of their titles, generating many rumors as to what might happen next .
Today, we know the answer. Perfect World Company has inked a deal to purchase Cryptic from Atari. Euro Investor has the full agreement between the two companies, which details the specifics of this $50+ million purchase. The Chinese firm, which already has a host of MMOs under its umbrella, is taking over 100% of Cryptic’s equity from Atari.
Perfect World’s Michael Chi thinks that this will give the company more credence in the western market: “We are very pleased to sign the agreement to acquire Cryptic Studios. This strategic acquisition will add attractive game titles to our portfolio, which will help us further penetrate into the U.S. and global online game markets. More importantly, Cryptic Studios’ highly reputable development team and its technology platform will further strengthen our well-established R&D capabilities. We deem this as another noteworthy achievement of our global expansion efforts.”
Hopefully, this deal will mean nothing but good things for Cryptic, which is also deep into development with Neverwinter.