We're very excited to be officially announcing Fireteam today. You can find all the relevant details in our press release.
So how did Fireteam come about?
Arnout, Ben and I started working together in 2006, developing the network infrastructure for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. Ben had just founded and was running Rackage Ltd, a gaming-focused ISP, Arnout was leading the programming team and integrating Demonware into the game, and I was looking after various beta tests we were running and setting up contracts with GSPs around the world.
The games industry and wider internet landscape was a bit different back then - there have been some dramatic shifts. Some highlights:
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iOS/Android smartphones appeared and now sit in around 500 million pockets - and have quickly become the most popular way to play games.
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Facebook killed MySpace, gathered close to 1 billion users, and almost half of those users access the platform through their phone. Farms were tended to.
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League of Legends, Battlefield Heroes and Team Fortress 2 have shown that f2p games can be fun, competitive, and have high production values. They've also shown that PC can't be killed off, and that an open platform will adapt to changing conditions quicker than a closed one
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Independent developers have started publishing their own games through these new channels
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All the while, traditional games consoles have remained strong and the quality and expectation bars for AAA games gets higher by the week
The next 5 years is going to be equally exciting. LTE/4G is going to make mobile games fly, tablet usage is growing faster than smartphones did, and the living room will become even more important. And it's all going to be powered by the network. This is what we're building Fireteam for.
For an early look at what we're up to, check out our What We Do page. We'll have much more information in the future, so keep checking back regularly.
I'm about to head off to Casual Connect in Hamburg, looking forward to seeing some good stuff! Drop me a mail at steve@fireteam.net if you would like to meet up.
