Team17 rocks Gamescom with biggest-ever showing

Rapidly-rising UK games publisher Team17 says it is on course to double its revenue in 2015.

The firm has just helped indie hit The Escapists pass $10m and almost 1m in unit sales. It also recently signed Yooka-Laylee, the new platformer from former Rare developers, and is creating two new Worms games – Worms WMD for Xbox One and PC, and Worms 4 for iOS.

The company is also helping launch indie games Beyond Eyes – which featured on-stage at Microsoft’s E3 press conference – Sheltered, Penarium, Deadwood, Strength of the Sword and The Escapists: The Walking Dead. But CEO Debbie Bestwick admitted the firm is almost at capacity.

Personally, I’d love to sign more, lots more, as I know what we are doing is super beneficial for the long term sustainability of our games developers,” she told MCV @ Gamescom.

The reality is we are now having to say no to 99.999 per cent of pitches we receive.”

Bestwick added that the company is looking to sign games from more established creators, but will continue to take risks on new talent.

Production values are rising fast and anyone who’s looking at sales data for indie games knows the problems in the market, so we need to make sure we are using our resources wisely to help the teams on our label reach their potential,” she said.

I love taking risks on completely unknown IP and working with raw development talent, but the reality is that these titles are very resource-intensive. This means that you will be seeing a few more experienced teams joining the label.”