Atari extends RollerCoaster Tycoon license

The RollerCoaster Tycoon series will remain an Atari property until 2022.

The announcement says that the agreement provides for investment and expansion of the series” and that Atari will continue to provide ongoing support across its RCT titles and the extension will benefit players with additional investment and product development from Atari”.

The most recent releases in the series were mobile titles RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch, which is a free-to-play mobile version of RCT World that has been downloaded over 6.5m times, and RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, which is a port amalgamating both the first RCT and successor RCT 2.

We are excited to extend our long-term partnership with Chris Sawyer,” said Atari CEO Fred Chesnais. RollerCoaster Tycoon has been a cornerstone of Atari’s portfolio of games across multiple platforms and moving forward there will be more fun, engaging and enduring experiences to be added to the franchise.”

PC release RollerCoaster Tycoon World, however, struggled through its development process and has been poorly received by gamers.

We have had a number of negative reactions from launch,” Chesnais told MCV last year. It’s a long run, this isn’t a hit and run project, we’re not about to walk away. There is a lot to come, and we have a post-launch plan to introduce new features.

If you work two years on a project and love your game, and then you release it and you have positive and negative reviews and other reviews – and by ‘other’ I mean people who trash the game even if they’ve barely played it – then, well, you have to love your job, right?

What I want to say is that we do read what people are writing. Even if it is positive or negative, we look at it and work out how to make the game better. We do read all the reviews. We do care.”

It has also been confirmed that Atari has signed PR agency UberStrategist.