In memoriam: Team17 co-founder Martin Brown and other game developers who died in 2024
Martin Brown, co-founder of Team17 and a 35-year gaming industry veteran, has died at the age of 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 founded consultancy Insight For Hire and helped support studios Double Eleven, Exient, The Blast Furnace and New Star Games, according to GamesIndustry.biz.
Other recent deaths include Martin Brown (2024), Dan Van Elderen (2024), Masayuki Kato (2024), Matthew White (2023), Alex Cabal (2024), Joe Banks (2024), Thomas Kurtz (2024), and Christopher Vivett (2024), Manny Granillo (2024), Erin Fusco (2024), Dylan Mecham (2024), Greg Hildebrand (2024), Mike Brennan (2024), Rupert Easterbrook (2024), Uwe Matton (2024).
Don Daglow, longtime industrial game developer, keeps a list of the deceased in the gaming industry at this link.
“Martin passed away peacefully in his sleep at 8:17 a.m., December 28, 2024, surrounded by his family, after a long battle with a series of strokes,” wrote Jack Brown. “Know that he went out on his own terms, listening to his favorite music and surrounded by the people he loved.”
Fellow game developers left memorials to Brown on social media, including a Facebook page.
Kevin Dent wrote: “Such an amazing man, he lived his life at top speed and brought the rest of us with him. There are very few people in the video game industry who are as infectious as Martin, everyone probably has a Martin story and mine was a positive one and usually involved meeting him in some obscure bar at a video game industry event somewhere in the world.”
Kish Hirani wrote on Facebook: “I have been processing the tragic news and wondering what can I say about this wonderful man Martin Brown? He had a great sense of fun, was extremely mischievous, loved to thoroughly enjoy himself, but also kind, considerate and always looked out for his friends and kept in touch with everyone!
When he visited…he brought me the BEST pork pies/scotch eggs and the only cross talk we’ve ever had over the years was about #HandbagGate when he hid a plate full of fish goujons in my bag at the launch party The London Games Festival… I opened my bag to a meeting the next day to the most horrible stench and my bag was ruined!”
Hirani added: “I find it funny now, but I didn’t find it very funny then! Needless to say, the lovely Martin sent me a beautiful new leather bag as an apology… I will dig that bag he bought me about 20 years ago and I will treasure it even more now! Goodbye, you wonderful, wonderful man… no doubt wherever you are, you’ll be making hell, partying, ordering huge drinks, cuddling dogs and playing Perudo!’
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