Team17: Multiplay Case Study
Team17 is a developer and indie games label renowned for creating hit multiplayer titles, stretching back to the original Worms in 1995 – an innovator of the couch multiplayer genre that launched on the Amiga and nine other devices. Since then, the company and its development partners have continued to create great games spanning all genres that deliver maximum fun to players.
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The challenges
How do you launch hit multiplayer titles across all of today’s most popular platforms while also supporting smaller teams with their launches?
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Platform
Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox One
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Project staff
80+
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Locations
Wakefield, UK
Manchester, UK
Keeping the knives sharp
To achieve their goals, Team17 employed Unity’s Multiplayer services to maximize their back-end. The studio is always looking to find the best tools to give their games the edge, to cut out the background noise and help them focus on delivering great gameplay without sacrificing the quality of their overall offering. Here, we’ll dive into the details of how this renowned studio leveraged Unity Multiplayer Services to deliver multi-platform titles that are all about crazy addictive fun with friends.
The Results
- Simplified cross-platform launches across two titles
- Scalable multiplayer infrastructure with Multiplay, delivering worldwide scaling with ease
- Flexible, robust hosting and matchmaker solutions without having to divert time and resources
Inviting more cooks to the kitchen, with Multiplay
Team17’s two top titles are heavily reliant on multiplayer, with Worms Rumble being an online-only game and Overcooked! All You Can Eat best enjoyed with friends near or far. Managing your own hosting service or setting up a fleet through a third party can take a lot of time, but having a rock-solid server offering is essential to maintaining a playerbase.
“Multiplay allows us to avoid a lot of pitfalls that might be hard to avoid on our own. We can scale between hardware and cloud easily, allowing us to fine tune the cost of servers.” says Niklas.
A balanced meal - matchmaking that you don’t have to battle for
A great matchmaking service would be essential to make sure players were quickly sorted into quality matches, but building a solution in-house would take a lot of resources, distracting from Team17’s main focus of making their games fun. Flexibility is always high on the priority list for a studio who works on such a variety of projects. After doing their research, they opted into the Unity Matchmaker Beta.
“When we looked around for a matchmaking solution the Unity Matchmaker stood out to us. It gave us flexibility as we were developing our first crossplay game. Knowing we had full programmatic control over the matchmaker function reassured us that whatever we needed, it would be up to the challenge.”
“I think it's hard to put into words how much time the flexibility and support from Multiplay saved us.” Niklas concludes.
Catering for all: more platforms, more problems?
“The two games that we've launched on the new generation of platforms are both cross-platform multiplayer, which has introduced a large level of complexity in terms of managing the releases of those platforms, the compatibility between each version, and making sure that everybody can play online together,” says Dave.
“I don't think we could have done crossplay games efficiently if we didn't use Multiplay and Matchmaker” says Niklas, “It was the only solution that allowed the flexibility we needed to handle the platform makers requirements.“
“Multiplay was a great choice of partner for us. They provided integrated matchmaking and server hosting that allowed us to focus on our matchmaking function and game development, while relying on their massive experience to make certain the game would hold up for launch. They provided clear data and invaluable advice, helping to make the launch a success.”