Martyn Brown, cofounder of Team17, passed away at 58.
Image Credit: Martyn Brown
Martyn Brown, cofounder of Team17 and a 35-year game industry veteran, has passed away at age 57.
Brown started Team17 with Debbie Bestwick and Michael Robinson in 1990.
Brown helped create more than 50 video games including Worms and Alien Breed. He also formed consultancy Insight For Hire and helped support studios Double Eleven, Exient, The Blast Furnace and New Star Games, according to GamesIndustry.biz.
Others who passed away recently include Dan Van Elderen (2024), Masayuki Kato (2024), Matthew White (2023), Alex Cabal (2024), Joe Banks (2024), Thomas Kurtz (2024), Christophe Vivet (2024), Manny Granillo (2024), Erin Fusco (2024), Dylan Mecham (2024), Greg Hildebrandt (2024), Mike Brennan (2024), Rupert Easterbrook (2024) and Uwe Mathon (2024).
Don Daglow, a longtime industry game developer, keeps a list of those who passed away in the game industry on this link.
“Martyn passed away peacefully in his sleep at 8:17am, 28th of December, 2024 surrounded by family, following a prolonged battle with a series of strokes,” Jack Brown wrote. “Know that he went out on his own terms listening to his favorite music and surrounded by loved ones.”
Fellow game developers are leaving memorials to Brown on social media, including a Facebook page.
Kevin Dent wrote, “Such an amazing guy, he lived his life in top gear and brought the rest of us along with him. There are very few people in the video games industry who are as infectious as Martyn, everyone probably has a Martyn story and mine were all positive and normally involved meeting him at some obscure bar at a video games industry event somewhere in the world.”
Kristy Payne wrote on Facebook, “I’ve been processing the tragic news and wondering what can I say about this lovely man Martyn Brown? He had a huge sense of fun, he was extremely mischievous, totally fun loving but also kind, thoughtful and he always cared for his friends and kept in touch with everyone!
When he visited… he brought me THE BEST pork pies/scotch eggs and the only crossed words we ever had over the years, was about #HandbagGate when he hid a plate full of fish goujons in my handbag at The London Games Festival launch party… I opened my bag in a meeting the following day to the most godawful stench and my handbag was ruined!”
Payne added, “I find it hilarious now but I didn’t find it very funny at the time! Needless to say that lovely Martyn sent me a beautiful new leather handbag by way of an apology… I shall dig out that handbag he bought me around 20 years ago, and I’ll cherish it even more now! Farewell you lovely, lovely man… no doubt you’ll be hellraising, partying, ordering a massive round of drinks, cuddling dogs and playing Perudo wherever you are!”
Kish Hirani said he met Brown at the Team17 office when his engineers (PlayStation Dev Services) visited the studio.
“We just got along so extremely well and little did we know that this would become a friendship as close as family,” Hirani said.
“He made my PlayStation role easier as he was extremely well connected, especially in the indie space. If devs needed help or connections at PlayStation, he would always share my details for direct contact, which helped us all, since approaching PlayStation could otherwise seem daunting but contact and collaboration are always a good thing,” Hirani said on Facebook.
He added, “We got a lot closer after I was made redundant at PlayStation and got a top secret XR project with Porsche in 2016. As it was a remote project and my only direct communication was with the Porsche HQ in Stuttgart, I needed someone to talk with ‘out loud’. I used to go stay at his place and do the annual group trips to Galway for his birthday in January. He would have been 58 next month.”
“I got a lot of the reflected fame (and a good dose of infamy) by association with Martyn. I came to expect random industry people approaching me because of Martyn, he was a natural people connector,” Hirani said. “Like at the Nordic Game party in San Francisco, GDC a few years back, when Rico Holmes, who I had never met or known, came and just kissed me on my cheek and uttered three words that I take as a badge of honor: ‘Martyn Brown’s friend!’ I am going to so miss you my dearest friend, my brother from another mother. RIP.”
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