Croteam is a Croatian video game developer based in Zagreb. The company was established by Davor Hunski, Damir Perović, Roman Ribarić and Dean Sekulić, four former classmates, in late August 1992. Croteam is best known for Serious Sam, a series of first-person shooters introduced with Serious Sam: The First Encounter in 2001. The company also developed the 2014 puzzle game The Talos Principle. Croteam employed approximately 40 people in 2020 and was acquired by its long-time publishing partner Devolver Digital in October that year.
History
Croteam was founded by Davor Hunski, Damir Perović, Roman Ribarić, and Dean Sekulić. Hunski and Ribarić were born and raised in the Utrina neighbourhood of Zagreb and initially met around age 6 at the "Mladost" primary school, which they attended for eight years. Perović and Sekulić came from the neighbouring and Sopot, respectively. All four were in Neli Mindoljević's class during their four-year tenure at the "Nikola Tesla" high school in Zagreb, graduating as part of the school's last generation in 1991. The brother of another classmate was the first Croat to release a commercial video game. After Hunski and Ribarić learned that the developer made a profit with his endeavour, they decided to develop games for a living. In late August 1992, while studying at separate universities, Hunski and Ribarić teamed up with Perović and Sekulić to found Croteam. Personal computers, such as the Amiga, were expensive at the time, wherefore the team acquired hardware from grey market, duty-free shops. The company initially operated out of Ribarić's apartment in Utrina and later rented an office in the building where Hunski resided with his mother. Both rent and hardware were financed by the parents of various employees. Other team members, such as Sekulić, worked from home and shared source code with the others by exchanging floppy disks. Several Croteam employees, including Hunski, were drafted for one-year military conscriptions. Croteam later rented office space from the .
Croteam's first game was a clone of Sokoban, created to demonstrate that the team could successfully complete a game. Having finished that project, the team decided to create a association football game, which later became a clone of Sensible Soccer. The game, Football Glory, entered production in late 1993 and was completed in October 1994. During this time, the Croteam staff was expanded with Admir Elezović, Alen Ladavac, Tomislav Pongrac, and Marko Sekulić. The game was released on 6 November 1994 for the 500, 1200 and 4000 models of the Amiga. The company subsequently created an MS-DOS version of the game, which was released in May 1995. Sensible Software, the developer of Sensible Soccer, soon threatened with legal action, wherefore Croteam ceased all development on Football Glory. An indoor soccer version of Football Glory, titled Five-A-Side Soccer, was completed in 1995 and designed for the Amiga 500, 1200, and 4000 systems. It was due to be published by Black Legend as Football Glory Indoors but the company was shut down in 1996 due to a declining Amiga games market. The game was released by the publisher's surviving German branch in 1996 before that branch shut down as well. Croteam eventually released Five-A-Side Soccer as public-domain software in March 2000.
Also in 1995, the studio began work on Save the Earth, a game created for , a Croatian children's game show by the Croatian national broadcaster, Hrvatska radiotelevizija. The game was designed for the Amiga 4000 with additional hardware. The development wrapped up in January 1996 and the game was shown on Turbo Limach Show every week between March and July 1996. In mid-1996, Croteam decided that its next game would a 3D first-person shooter game with a dark, horror-themed atmosphere. The company announced the game Flesh in September that year. Davor Tomičić, another former classmate of the four founders, joined Croteam in late 1997. In 1998, the theme of the game, which was now known as In the Flesh, was changed to a more bright and open environment, followed by a name change to Serious Sam the year after, upon insistence from Ribarić. Damjan Mravunac was hired in 1999 as Croteam's composer and sound effects designer, taking over the latter occupation from Ribarić. He was followed shortly by Dinko Pavičić and Petar Ivanček, completing the development team for Serious Sam.