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. Through a management buyout performed by Bestwick, both Robinson and Brown departed from Team17 in 2010, leaving Bestwick as the sole manager. In 2013, Team17 initiated a publishing venture focusing on indie games. The first game to release of this venture was Light (2013). Following a large investment from Lloyds Development Capital in September 2016, Team17 sought corporate expansion through various actions, including the acquisition of Mouldy Toof Studios, the developer behind Team17-published The Escapists (2015¹), and the hiring of multiple new key staff.…

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. Through a management buyout performed by Bestwick, both Robinson and Brown departed from Team17 in 2010, leaving Bestwick as the sole manager. In 2013, Team17 initiated a publishing venture focusing on indie games. The first game to release of this venture was Light (2013). Following a large investment from Lloyds Development Capital in September 2016, Team17 sought corporate expansion through various actions, including the acquisition of Mouldy Toof Studios, the developer behind Team17-published The Escapists (2015), and the hiring of multiple new key staff. In May 2018, the company was organized under the Team17 Group (later renamed Everplay), which became a public company listed on the Alternative Investment Market, valued around . As of 2019, Team17 employs 200 people across its three offices in Wakefield, Manchester and Nottingham.

IPO and management troubles (2018–present)

In March 2018, Team17 tasked stockbrokers from Berenberg and GCA Altium to prepare an initial public offering (IPO), valuing Team17 at . The company confirmed its intent to become a public company on 8 May 2018, announcing that a 50% stake of a new holding company, Team17 Group, would be sold over the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange. The flotation was expected to value the group between and £230 million. Bestwick and LDC would each sell half of their shareholdings in the process, wherein Bestwick was expected to receive in windfall profit. Chris Bell, formerly the chief executive of Ladbrokes Coral, was appointed chairman of Team17 Group to aid the IPO process. At this time, the company employed 120 people in the Wakefield development studio and another 20 in the Nottingham publishing offices. Team17 was expected to gain in gross profits based on 27,325,482 new shares and 37,849,200 existing shares. The shares became available for purchase via the AIM on 23 May 2018. Following the sale of shareholdings by Bestwick and LDC, they retained 22.2% and 16.6% stake ownerships in the company, respectively. Through the first half of 2019, Team17's revenue rose significantly; 83% of its revenue was attributed to its publishing activities, of which 80% stemmed from games Team17 had co-developed internally. Notably successful were Hell Let Loose and My Time at Portia, which were the best-performing games for the company in that time frame. Team17 Group announced that, with this funding, it would be looking into acquiring more development studios. The company's headcount also increased from 154 to 182 in that period, because of which Team17 moved its headquarters to new offices within Wakefield in November 2019. The number of staff further increased to 200 by the end of the year. In September 2019, Martin Hellawell was appointed a non-executive director of Team17 Group. In January 2020, Team17 acquired the Manchester-based developer Yippee Entertainment for , a combination of in cash and 114,000 consideration shares, worth . The company bought out Golf with Your Friends, which it had published, from developers Blacklight Interactive in January 2021¹, planning to release further downloadable content (DLC) for it. In July 2021, Team17 Group acquired StoryToys, a developer of edutainment apps, for . In January 2022, Team17 Group acquired Astragon, a German publisher focused on simulation video games, for £83 million. 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 June 2023, Team17 bought the rights for Hell Let Loose from the original developers Black Matter and founded a new studio named Cover 6 Studios to develop the game alongside Manchester-based Expression Games. 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. Eurogamer reported that many employees were unaware of the project and were blindsided by its announcement, including the social media team, which suffered online abuse and harassment from the public. Others who had knowledge of the project voiced their opposition to NFTs but were ignored by upper management, which went forward anyway. 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. Staff felt underpaid relative to the salaries of equivalent roles at other studios and some complained of unpaid overtime work. They also pointed to their year-end bonus being cut in 2021 despite the company announcing a record profit that year. Another source of conflict was the human resources (HR) department, which was accused of covering for sexual harassers and manipulating the company's reviews on Glassdoor, a job search website. They likewise took issue with Bestwick's management as CEO, for being a major source of overtime pressure and for turning a blind eye to harassment in the company. Fanbyte corroborated these testimonies in its own reporting. 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.

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