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Team17

From a Wakefield PD library to Worms

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Team17 was formed in December 1990 when Wakefield's 17-Bit Software, a public-domain disk library, joined up with Team 7, the programmers and artist behind the budget game Miami Chase. Its Amiga games, from Full Contact and Alien Breed to Superfrog, sold on their looks. Worms, signed in 1994 and sold across formats through a 1995 distribution deal with Ocean, carried the company into the 21st century. It floated in 2018, and its parent was renamed everplay group plc in 2025.

Team17 began over a public-domain disk library in Wakefield. 17-Bit Software sold cheap disks of demos, music and artwork to Amiga owners by post, and in 1990 the people running it decided to make games of their own with the programmers and artists they had been distributing. Early in 1991 Amiga Format announced that “some of the best demo writers in Europe have teamed-up to form a brand new software house: Team 17”. Its first two games both reached number 2 in the Amiga charts in 1991, and its fourth year produced a signing that kept it alive after the Amiga died: Andy Davidson’s Worms. More than thirty years on, Team17 is still based in Wakefield.

Fast facts

  • Formed: 7 December 1990, by the company’s own account, from 17-Bit Software and Team 7. Registered as Team 17 Software Limited in June 1991.
  • Founders: Michael Robinson, Martyn Brown and Debbie Bestwick, by the company’s account, with Team 7’s Andreas Tadic, Rico Holmes and Peter Tuleby.
  • First game: Full Contact, 1991.
  • Best known for: Alien Breed, Superfrog, Project-X and Worms.
  • Today: a developer and publisher label inside everplay group plc, the listed company called Team17 Group plc until 2025.

17-Bit and Team 7

Michael Robinson ran Microbyte, a chain of computer shops, and started 17-Bit Software as a public-domain library. Its adverts gave a Wakefield PO box in 1989, and by 1992 an office on Market Street. Martyn Brown worked for Microbyte. Simon Parkin’s 2016 history of the company for Ars Technica tells how Brown put the Swedish programmer Andreas Tadic in touch with the artist Rico Holmes. With the programmer Peter Tuleby they called themselves Team 7, and their first game, the driving game Miami Chase, came out on Codemasters’ budget label. Brown then persuaded Robinson that 17-Bit should make games as well as sell them. Robinson moved Debbie Bestwick over from Microbyte’s sales side, and the two names were merged into one.

Holmes’s work had been on 17-Bit disks since 1989, when Amiga Format picked out his picture from the 17-Bit Artwork disk. The musician Allister Brimble followed the same path. He sent his first tunes to 17-Bit, “and when 17-bit Software set up Team 17 I was obviously first in line to create the music for their games, such as Alien Breed, Project-X”.

The Amiga years

Full Contact, a one-on-one beat-’em-up sold for £9.99, stood at number 2 in the Gallup Amiga chart printed in Amiga Power’s September 1991 issue. Alien Breed, at £24.99, entered the same chart at number 2 that Christmas. Amiga Power’s review called Team17 “ex-PD people” who had “got the visual side and basic ideas spot on”.

The development teams did not have to be in Wakefield. In December 1992 The One described Superfrog as the work of “the same Sweden-based duo that produced Alien Breed and Project-X – programmer Andreas Tadic and graphic artist Rico Holmes”, with “Team 17 boss Martyn Brown” as project manager. The Team17 diary that ran in The One reported finishing PC versions of Body Blows and Alien Breed in the summer of 1993.

The games were known for their presentation: fast scrolling, big sprites and a lot of sound. Reviewers were not always as keen on how they played. The strictest of them, Amiga Power, gave Body Blows 89% and Superfrog 78%, and in July 1993 it offered new subscribers a free copy of either game. By 1995 Team17’s relations with that magazine had broken down completely. The story, including the lawsuit Amiga Power said Team17 threatened and the review copies it stopped sending, is told in Amiga Power versus Team17.

Worms and Ocean

Andy Davidson’s artillery game, first called Total Wormage, reached Team17 in 1994; the Andy Davidson and Worms entries tell that story. In an interview with Parkin, Bestwick said Team17 “had zero console experience on the publishing side” and chose Ocean over Virgin.

CU Amiga reported the deal in May 1995. Ocean would “exclusively distribute their games on all formats”, taking Team17 from “18 countries to 64 countries”, and would “provide the necessary cash and backing to launch titles across all home entertainment machines”. Worms would appear “on up to 16 formats”, and future games would carry both companies’ logos. Asked whether Team17 would be “swallowed up”, its PR manager Alan Bunker said the branding would be kept “and we are still 100% independent”.

When that contract ended, Team17 moved to MicroProse. PC Gamer reported in September 1997 that Worms 2 and the next six Team17 games would be published by MicroProse. Managing director Michael Robinson said a worldwide deal with a major publisher was “the best way to gain a global presence and to take the Team 17 brand into the next century”.

After the Amiga

By Bestwick’s account to Parkin, Worms sold “millions of copies in that first year”, and it nearly cost the company everything. “We almost lost the Worms IP over a ridiculous loan we took out against sales of a specific game,” she said. Parkin counted 16 Worms games between 1995 and 2010, and wrote that Team17 made no profit in the first decade of the new century.

Bestwick became joint chief executive in 2009 and sole chief executive in 2010. A restructuring in 2010 included a management buyout of Robinson and Brown. Brown left in 2011, and the registered company changed its name from Team 17 Software to Team 17 Digital in 2012. In 2013 Team17 went back to publishing other studios’ games, “after a hiatus of almost two decades”, and its label went on to publish games such as The Escapists, made by a former roofer, Chris Davis.

The group floated on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in 2018. Bestwick said in March 2023 that she would step down as chief executive and stay on the board. Steve Bell took over on 1 January 2024. In January 2025 the listed company, Team17 Group plc, announced that it would become everplay group plc. Team17 carries on under its own name as a developer and publishing label inside the group.

Martyn Brown died on 28 December 2024. The company’s tribute described him as “a driving force at our Wakefield studio until he left in 2011”.

Released source code

Team17 gave away the source code of Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds on Amiga Format’s cover CD in March 1997. The magazine listed the “complete source code” among the CD’s contents. Public copies of that source are the basis of later community rebuilds of the game.

Sources

  • Amiga Format issue 5, December 1989: 17 Bit Software’s PO Box 97 Wakefield address, and Rico Holmes’s picture on the 17-Bit Artwork disk.
  • Amiga Format issue 20, March 1991: news item on the formation of Team 17 and Full Contact.
  • Amiga Power issue 5, September 1991: Gallup Amiga chart (Full Contact, £9.99, number 2).
  • Amiga Power issue 8, December 1991: Alien Breed review, by Rich Pelley, 82%.
  • Amiga Power issue 9, January 1992: Gallup Amiga chart (Alien Breed, £24.99, new entry at number 2).
  • The One issue 48, September 1992: 17 Bit Software’s Market Street, Wakefield address.
  • The One issue 51, December 1992: Superfrog preview (Tadic and Holmes; Martyn Brown as project manager).
  • The One issue 60, September 1993: Team 17 diary (PC versions of Body Blows and Alien Breed).
  • Amiga Power issue 27, July 1993: subscription offer with Body Blows (“AP rated 89%”) or Superfrog (“AP rated 78%”) as the free gift.
  • CU Amiga, May 1995: news item “Ocean teams up”, with Alan Bunker’s statement.
  • PC Gamer (UK) issue 47, September 1997: news item on the MicroProse deal, quoting Michael Robinson.
  • Amiga Format issue 95, March 1997: cover CD contents (the Alien Breed 3D II source code).
  • Amiga Format issue 103, November 1997: interview with Allister Brimble.
  • Simon Parkin, “Worms or bust: The story of Britain’s most tenacious indie games company”, Ars Technica, 12 June 2016 (web, secondary): 17-Bit, Microbyte and Team 7; the choice of Ocean; Worms sales and the loan; the 2010 restructuring.
  • Team17, “The Team17 Story”, company history page (web, secondary): the 7 December 1990 founding date; the 2013 return to publishing.
  • Team17, “Remembering Martyn Brown – 1967–2024”, 28 January 2025 (web, secondary).
  • PocketGamer.biz, “Debbie Bestwick to step down as Team17 CEO after more than a decade”, 28 March 2023 (web, secondary): chief executive from 2009, sole chief executive from 2010; the 2018 flotation.
  • everplay group plc, “Team17 Group plc announces company re-brand to everplay group plc”, 23 January 2025 (web, secondary).
  • Wikipedia, “Team17” (web, secondary): Steve Bell as chief executive from 1 January 2024.
  • Wikipedia, “Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds” (web, secondary): later versions compiled from the released source.
  • Companies House, company 02621976 (Team 17 Digital Limited): incorporation, 1991, and change of name, 2012.

See also

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