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Company Profile

Team17

Team 17 Digital Limited (Team17) is a British video game developer and publisher based in Wakefield, England. The venture was created in December 1990 through the merger of British publisher 17-Bit Software and Swedish developer Team 7. At the time, the two companies consisted of and were led by Michael Robinson, Martyn Brown and Debbie Bestwick, and Andreas Tadic, Rico Holmes and Peter Tuleby, respectively. Bestwick later became Team17's chief executive officer until 1 January 2024. After its first game, Full Contact (1991) for the Amiga, the studio followed up with multiple number-one releases on that platform and saw major success with Andy Davidson's Worms in 1995, the resulting franchise of which still remains as the company's primary development output, having developed over 20 entries in it.

History
Early history (1990–1995) (pictured in 2018) co-founded the company in 1990 and led it as CEO until January 1, 2024. In 1990, Wakefield-based entrepreneur Michael Robinson was the manager of Microbyte, a United Kingdom-wide computer retail chain, and 17-Bit Software, a video game publisher. In the same month, it also acquired The Label, a San Francisco–based video game publisher focusing on video game subscriptions and known for publishing What the Golf?, eventually renaming the company Team17 USA. Michael Pattison was hired to lead Team17 as CEO in October 2021. In early 2022, Team17 announced MetaWorms, a non-fungible token (NFT) project, to sell procedurally generated images of characters from Worms as digitally owned objects on a blockchain. The reaction to this project was swift and negative; the company cancelled it after multiple game development studios it had partnered with in the past, including Ghost Town Games, Playtonic and Aggro Crab, condemned the project and vowed not to work with the publisher again. The conflict between management and employees over MetaWorms also revealed long-term complaints over low pay, long overtime hours, and increasing workloads since the company's 2018 IPO. Under pressure to sign and clear more publishing deals, various teams, including quality assurance (QA) and user research felt that products were being shipped in an incomplete, rushed, or buggy state due to the time crunch. Pattison acknowledged the reports and committed to addressing the issues with underpay, overtime, and harassment in a company-wide meeting in February 2022. In March 2023, Team17 announced a realignment that resulted in the redundancy of employees from the art and design teams as part of the company's focus on publishing and third-party development. Later that month, Bestwick announced that she intended to step down as CEO once a replacement is found. She would transition to a non-executive role while remaining on the board of directors. Steve Bell, the former CEO of the marketing agency Iris, joined the board in September 2023 and replaced Bestwick as the CEO on 1 January 2024. In October 2023, Team17 laid off 50 jobs from the company's QA, usability, programming, and marketing teams as part of a restructuring effort. Pattison also left the company. Team17 Group rebranded as Everplay to better reflect its structure composed of Team17, StoryToys, and Astragon. == Games developed and published ==
Source: Wikipedia ↗
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