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Worms

Wriggling its way to a licensing program.

Birmingham, UK, February 7 2011.  For the first time, the hugely popular videogames franchise Worms™ is being offered to licensees, retailers and promoters for a range of merchandise, by UK-based brand owner Team17 Software Ltd. and its worldwide licensing agent AT New Media. Worms™, which celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2010, is a bestselling, award-winning and hilarious turn-based strategy videogame.

With millions of players and fans, its irreverent mix of ludicrous action-strategy captivates and entertains audiences of all ages worldwide. The games feature colourful, cartoon-style action, cute characters and a variety of hilarious weapons. Players control a small platoon of anarchic yet charming worms across a deformable landscape, battling other computer or player-controlled teams. Since Worms™ was first unleashed into the video-gaming world in 1995, the intrepid invertebrates have been released on over 20 gaming platforms, selling approximately 30 million retail copies to date. The Worms™ brand has been at the forefront of modern distribution trends and has seen sales in excess of 10 million on mobile phone handsets, and also seen huge success on the new digital video-game platforms, with number 1 hits on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation® Network, Apple’s App Store, and Steam for PC.

Key features of the series include  the ability to customize the worms with a ridiculous array of hats, hair, hands and glasses; its extensive variety of crazy, surreal and hilarious weaponry, ranging from grenades and homing missiles to exploding Sheep, Banana Bombs, the iconic Holy Hand Grenade, and even a mythical Concrete Donkey and its hilarious audio, with a large number of memorable catchphrases and taunts shouted by the worms during the course of battle, such as..."I'll get you!", "Revenge!", "Stupid!", “Traitor!”, “Incoming!” and "You’ll Regret That!”.

“We are very excited at the prospect of working with licensees, manufacturers and promoters,” says Debbie Bestwick, Managing Director and Co-founder, Team17 Software Ltd., “The Worms™ brand has a vast array of cheeky, funny and cute characteristics, which inspires great merchandise design. It’s something we’ve always been asked to do and now with the superb success of the Worms™ brand across social, digital and mobile gaming platforms we have the freedom and flexibility to pursue the opportunity fully.”

“When you realize that Worms™ does not already have an extensive licensing program, you are amazed,” says Simon Kay, Business Development Director, AT New Media Limited, “AT New Media is so thrilled to have the opportunity to extend these popular and unique characters into a range of merchandise that ideally suits the consumer market today. We certainly envisage the Worms™ brand being successful in the areas of figurines and accessories, toys, books, plushes, apparel/clothing and even greeting cards.”

WORMS™ BRAND FACTS:

The Worms™ brand has sold more video-game units, year on year, for the last 3 years than ever before. Team17’s official Facebook Worms™ page has approximately 600,000 fans, and is growing rapidly - http://www.facebook.com/WormsTeam17 The Worms™ brand continues to innovate and grow, with major future games releases planned on the mobile stores, Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation® Network, PC, MSN and also onto online social networking platforms. The Worms™ brand offers excellent licensing opportunities as it has enduring appeal over 15 years, is seen as a true legend of gaming brands, has won numerous awards, and often features in “Best Video-games of all time” polls and articles. The Worms™ brand has strong generational appeal and also parental approval and recognition – parents who played the game in the 1990s now have children playing the current versions on their smart-phones and other devices. Worms™ has especially strong appeal to the boys’ 7-12 merchandise market because of the cheeky humour, crazy characters and anarchic weapons and destruction. ENDS

Notes to editors:

About Team17 Software Ltd.

Team17 Software Limited (Team 17) celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2010 and headquartered in West Yorkshire, England, is a leading independent developer and digital publishing company. Founded in 1990, the company develops and publishes interactive software worldwide for digital game systems, personal computers, wireless devices and the Internet. More information about Team17 products can be found at www.team17.com .

About AT New Media

AT New Media is a licensing agency and consultancy, offering a comprehensive range of services to brand owners, content providers and merchandise licensees.  AT New Media is positioned at the junction where new media meets brand licensing, offering a high level of expertise and experience in some of the most rapidly evolving new interactive platforms including mobile phones, the Internet, Digital interactive TV (DiTV) and videogames.  AT New Media achieved worldwide recognition with licensed merchandise for The Annoying Thing aka Crazy Frog:  the first character to emerge from new media into the mainstream. 

Contact for editors:

Simon Kay, simon@atnewmedia.com , +44 (0) 7973 754239 

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