Hipster Whale sold to Atari for $29.3m, will mine Atari classics

Crossy Road remains Hipster Whale’s standout success: the game has exceeded 340 million downloads since launch and generated $10 million within its first 90 days back in 2014. Cofounder Matt Hall told MobileGamer.biz that at Crossy Road’s peak it was pulling in about $250,000 per day. Hall also said Hipster Whale had turned down acquisition offers over the years, but found Atari’s bid and alignment appealing.

Hall and Atari CEO Wade Rosen have known each other for years, with conversations stretching back well before Rosen began steering Atari’s revival in 2021. Their talks intensified at Gamescom 2025, Hall said, and that’s when the acquisition process began to move seriously. By June of this year the transaction was complete, making Hipster Whale part of Atari’s growing stable of retro and arcade-focused teams.

With access to Atari’s catalog, Hipster Whale is already cataloguing properties it could bring to mobile. Hall named Pong, Breakout, Centipede and Missile Command as examples that still exist today but aren’t available on mobile platforms, and said he’s “interested in” bringing them back. He added he wants to preserve some titles while also “updat[ing] them and mak[ing] them exciting — a modern take, even.” That language suggests projects could range from faithful preservation to refreshed remakes.

Preservation is a stated priority for both Hall and Rosen. Hall said he wants Atari’s classic brands to be playable across “every platform possible,” listing typical mobile formats through Apple TV, Netflix and even arcade cabinets. Hipster Whale is already working on weaving a number of Atari properties into Crossy Road, and Hall flagged the possibility of retro collections such as Atari 50 appearing on mobile platforms.