The US-based branch of Atari has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an effort to deal with the issues of its debt-laden French parent company. If successful, the US arm hopes to find a buyer that will privatize the US-based company.

Atari has been dealing with financial difficulties for a long time; and the company has tried a number of things to deal with the financial issues, with some meeting with a little success and others just making the situation worse.

Currently, Atari apparently has no funds to release titles that are currently in development. The publisher believes that it could come out from bankruptcy with little or no debt and get a new credit line in place to release titles that are currently in development.

Most recently, Atari has had success with conversions of classic Atari titles that have either been converted or re-imagined for the mobile and tablet market space. Beyond that, the company has been responsible for publishing a number of other titles from its stable that have met with various degrees of success. It remains to be seen if Atari US will be able to pull this off; but if not, you can be sure that a number of publishers will be lining up to capture the company’s retro IP collection, which is vast.