Croteam

Lore & Background

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. 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.

In late August 1992, while studying at separate universities, they founded Croteam. 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. Croteam's first game was a clone of Sokoban. Their second game, Football Glory, was released on 6 November 1994 for the Amiga.

The company subsequently created an MS-DOS version released in May 1995. Sensible Software threatened legal action, so Croteam ceased development on Football Glory. An indoor soccer version, Five-A-Side Soccer, was completed in 1995 but never commercially published; it was released as public-domain software in March 2000. Also in 1995, the studio began work on Save the Earth for the Croatian children's game show Turbo Limach Show.

In mid-1996, Croteam decided its next game would be a 3D first-person shooter with a dark, horror-themed atmosphere, announced as Flesh in September 1996. The theme later changed to a bright, open environment, and the game was renamed Serious Sam in 1999. Serious Sam: The First Encounter was released in 2001, followed by Serious Sam: The Second Encounter in 2002. Serious Sam 2 was released on 11 October 2005.

Serious Sam 3: BFE was released in November 2011. In December 2014, Croteam released The Talos Principle. On 16 October 2020, Devolver Digital acquired Croteam. The company's legal entities were consolidated into Abest d.o.o. on 1 April 2021.

Reader's Guide

Croteam developed the Serious Engine (formerly named S-Cape3D) for Serious Sam: The First Encounter. Later iterations include Serious Engine 2, Serious Engine 3, Serious Engine 3.5, and Serious Engine 4. Serious Engine 4 premiered with The Talos Principle. For The Talos Principle 2, Croteam replaced Serious Engine with Unreal Engine 4, ultimately switching to Unreal Engine 5. In 2015, Croteam launched Croteam Indie, later expanded into Croteam Incubator, a business incubator programme supporting small indie game development teams in Croatia.

Did You Know?

• Croteam released the source code for Serious Engine version 1.10 under the GNU GPL-2.0-only in March 2016.
• Croteam Incubator was formally announced in March 2018 with six studios based in the same Zagreb office.