Team17 Co-Founder Martyn Brown Passed Away

Martyn Brown, co-founder of the legendary British videogame publisher Team17, has passed away at the age of 57. Retro gaming collector Mark Howlett posted the news on social media.

As a developer, Martyn Brown helped create the legendary Worms franchise of evergreen annelid warfare, which remains one of the most recognizable titles in the world today.

Brown was instrumental in developing Alien Breed, Body Blows, Superfrog, and Project X, quintessential titles for the Commodore Amiga computers in the dawn of PC gaming.

Brown was a gaming pioneer who rose to prominence after the merger of 17-Bit Software and Team 7, working with Debbie Bestwick, Allister Brimble, Rico Holmes, Michael Robinson, Andreas Tadic, and Peter Tuleby.

Last month, the Game Republic Awards bestowed the title of Games Legend upon Brown, for 35 years of distinguished service building the gaming industry as we know it.

Martyn Brown, Gaming Pioneer

During an interview with Peter Ward of Retro Games Master, Martyn Brown said his first foray into gaming was straight out of technical college, at a games shop in Leeds in the mid-1980s. His very first game came out in 1984.

Brown made the full jump into the nascent gaming industry after working with Rico Holmes, Andreas Tadic, and Allister Brimble to create demos. The group was frustrated about the low quality of games for the Amiga.

This led to the birth of 17bit, which merged with Team 7 in 1990 to create Team17. Brown did “a bit of everything” in the company. In his own words, “as co-founder of Team17, I did the general management of the studio in terms of its people and projects. I’m also responsible for the overall quality and content of our titles.”

Brown left Team17 in 2010 in search of new challenges, closing a two-decade-long chapter that had a transformative effect on the gaming industry as a whole.

He spent most of the last 14 years working on casual sports titles, particularly for the mobile market, with a goal of keeping these games fun without pushing “overly cynical f2p mobile stuff”.

It is hard to quantify the effect that Martyn Brown had on the gaming industry. Without the golden age of Amiga gaming that Team17 unleashed, we might never have gotten where we are today.

Thank you, Martyn, for the great games, the memories, and the passion for the art of development.