Chinese MMO operator Perfect World, which maintains a popular MMO title by the same name, has bought Cryptic Studios from Atari. The Chinese company seems to have paid the sum of about $ 50 million in cash for Cryptic, the studio behind City of Heroes and Star Trek Online.
Atari announced last month that Cryptic Studios was up for sale but said that support for existing titles made for Atari (like STO and Champions Online) would continue as normal. Commenting on the purchase, Perfect World CEO Michael Chi said “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.”
Perfect World is known locally for publishing the Torchlight RPG made by Runic Games but also hosts a large stable of international MMO titles.
Brett Venter
