Team17

History

The company were originally called 17-Bit Software, which grew out of the Microbyte retail chain in 1987, and specialised in cataloguing, producing and publishing an Amiga public domain software library. Most sales were made for freeware games and utility disks such as the virus checkers. During the formation of Team17, Martyn Brown actively recruited coders and artists from the Amiga demo scene to program games for Team17.

In 1990, a developer called Team 7 approached 17-Bit to publish their new game. They combined to form Team17, and in 1991 published the fighting game Full Contact for the Amiga, with the intention to produce a game that made use of this computer's unique capabilities. Team17 then went on to develop further Amiga games, including the Alien Breed and Body Blows series. Team17 also published titles in the UK for other developers such as AUDIOS and Eclipse UK. Almost all early titles were the result of liaising with freelance developers; there were few in-house developers.

In 1995, Team17 entered into an agreement with Ocean Software whereby Ocean would co-publish Team17's titles worldwide. The first title to be released under this agreement was Alien Breed 3D for the Amiga and Amiga CD32 systems. The second title was Worms, Team17's biggest success to date, and Team17's first multiple format release; the game was published in late 1995 and early 1996 for the Amiga, PC MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, PlayStation, Super NES, Game Boy, Atari Jaguar, Mega Drive/Genesis and Sega Saturn, with a version planned for release on the Virtual Boy, although this was cancelled following the poor release of the console in Japan. Worms outsold FIFA 96 and Tomb Raider, topped the UK all-formats video game chart and won several awards. Team17 developed some of the console ports themselves, the others were produced by East Point Software.

Since the release of Worms, the franchise has gone on to be very successful, selling over 12 million units worldwide. This all-platform success contributed towards Team17's decision to cease publishing Amiga titles in 1997, as the platform had long been in a state of decline. They released Worms: The Director's Cut exclusively on the Amiga as a swan song. Team17 then focused on the PC market, releasing titles such as Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy (although this game was then adapted and released for the Amiga by ClickBoom) and Addiction Pinball, although they also produced some console-exclusive titles such as X2. Team17 has continued developing and porting Worms games in the decades that followed.

Team17 developed not only their own titles during the 2000s, but also wrote games for other publishers' franchises. They made Army Men: Major Malfunction in 2006, ported Lemmings to the PSP, and created Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust in 2009. During this period, they were also short-listed for the "British developer of the year" by The Golden Joystick Awards. In 2009, Team17 returned to their own franchise with the launch of Alien Breed Evolution.

Team17 remains an independent game development studio with dozens of staff members. This makes it one of the longest surviving independent developers, now into its 28th year.

Cancelled games

Amiga Power dispute

During the 1990s, Team17 had a feud with gaming magazine Amiga Power. Amiga Power had a fairness policy of giving a 50% score to an average game, instead of 73% to keep game producers happy, a practice the company saw as inherently wrong. Team17 put several easter eggs in their games. For example, typing "AMIGAPOWER" into Alien Breed 2 would display a message criticising Amiga Power's review policy; computer players at the easiest difficulty setting in Arcade Pool, F17 Challenge and Kingpin: Arcade Sports Bowling were named after Amiga Power staff members. Two of Amiga Power former writers, Stuart Campbell and Jonathan Nash, claim that a Team17 staff member made allegations of bribery and corruption in French magazine Amiga Concept. Team17 refused to supply review copies of games to Amiga Power, even demanding reviewers at its sister magazine Amiga Format sign declarations stating that they would not share their review copies with Amiga Power. In response to Amiga Power reviews of Kingpin and ATR: All Terrain Racing, Team17 filed a libel action demanding the magazine stop "lying about their games".