Yahoo Finance Debbie Bestwick net worth | Evening Standard Tech Rich List
Debbie Bestwick
Company: Team17
Wealth estimate: £139 million
Debbie Bestwick first became interested in video games when she played the original 1982 version of Football manager on her brother’s ZX Spectrum.
At 16, she took up a job at a video game store, and took over the business when its owner retired. She sold the store to computer retailer Microbyte and when Microbyte set up an in-house game development arm, Bestwick led its commercial operations.
Team17 faced difficulties as the Commodore computers it developed games for fell out of favour. But setting out to create a game that would be ported across a number of machines it launched Worms, one of the most successful games of all time with millions of units shipped even before counting its sequels.
In 2010, Bestwick led a management buyout. Eight years later, the business launched an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange, netting Bestwick around £50 million for half her shares.
In March 2023, Bestwick announced that she would step down from Team17 to spend more time with her family.
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