Games corpse Atari has issued a statement saying that it is in fact not owned by rapper Soulja Boy.
In a post on Twitter, the industry icon of days long since past said that the musician – of Crank That (Soulja Boy) fame – was not its CEO. This came in the wake of Soulja Boy claiming in an Instagram Live stream that he not only owned Atari, but was also the first rapper to own a games company.
Furthermore, the musician said that he had signed two contracts with Atari, though it's not clear exactly what these entail. He also promised to "revamp the company" and "take Atari to the next level," which are both things most people can agree the old-school games icon definitely needs.
In response, Atari posted on Twitter that Wade Rosen is in fact its chief executive, a position he has held since April of this year when the brand split in two: the games-focused Atari Gaming and the crypto-centric Atari Blockchain.
"We know that CEO of Atari is a dream job, but that honor belongs to Wade Rosen," the firm wrote.
This isn't Soulja Boy's first foray into the games industry, if you can call it that. Back 2018, the rapper released a number of Souljagame consoles via his Soulja Boy Games label, though these were Chinese bootlegs. Earlier this year, the musician said that he was making some more games consoles.
In the same live stream that he boasted he owned Atari, Soulja Boy said that he was selling his games business for $140 million.
As for what's actually going on here, in a livestream following Atari's rebuttal that Soulja Boy is its CEO, the rapper showed one of the contracts which – as spotted by Twitter user @Cynnthetic – says that the deal mentions Atari Tokens. This is the firm's cryptocurrency. So it might be the case that Soulja Boy has massively misunderstood the terms of the deal he signed with Atari.
Honestly, who knows. Atari being owned by Soulja Boy would perhaps be the most normal thing that has happened to it in recent memory. As previously mentioned, the company has jumped into the crypto space – for some reason? – and more recently has started toying around with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), again, for some reason??
What's more, it also wants to "level up" hotel entertainment. WHAT DOES EVEN THIS MEAN!?
Oh, and Atari is actually still doing games things. Most recently, the firm launched its own Atari VCS console, a project that arrived after a number of significant delays.
