Back in 2017, Slightly Mad Studios’ CEO explained how Electronic Arts attempted to destroy Slightly Mad Studios. Back then, Ian Bell claimed that he would not be working ever again with EA. However, here we are today with EA owning Slightly Mad Studios, shutting it down, and canceling its racing game, Project CARS.
For those wondering, in 2019, Codemasters acquired Slightly Mad Studios. And then, in 2021, Electronic Arts acquired Codemasters. So, in an ironic turn of events, Ian Bell’s studios returned to EA. Ironically, this is almost exactly what happened with Human Head Studios and Bethesda.
But anyway, as EA told GamesIndustry:
“Today we announced internally an update to our racing portfolio. Following an evaluation of the next Project CARS title and its longer-term growth potential, we have made the decision to stop further development and investment for the franchise.
Decisions like these are very hard, but allow us to prioritise our focus in areas where we believe we have the strongest opportunity to create experiences that fans will love. We are focusing on our strengths in our racing portfolio, particularly licensed IP and open-world experiences, and expanding our franchises to be more socially-led with long-term live services that will engage global communities. Games are at the heart of sports and racing entertainment, and with shifting fan expectations, we recognise the need to evolve our games beyond pure play, providing experiences for fans to also watch, create and connect with their friends.”
According to reports, EA will be also dropping the Dirt series. However, Codemasters will be still working on rally games as EA has acquired the WRC license. So this feels more like a rebranding. It remains to be seen though whether or not the WRC games will be as hardcore as the DiRT Rally games.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Socially led …. Had such hopes for new WRC title at one point now its dead.
last week i found out there was a new WRC game, They didn’t do any advertising at all with the new one, wouldn’t suprise me if that also got canceld.
Small French publisher Nacon had the WRC license for the last several years and they put out their last game with the license, WRC Generations. They lost the license to EA. It’s definitely an option and will likely be superior to whatever live service AIDS that EA will shxt out.
TLDR: EA: “You can just use your 2000 dollar racing setup for the new NSF bro. Nobody likes semi realistic racing and rallying games anymore you old clown”
And just as I was gonna make the investment. Sad for the veterans.
ea did it good shutting down, who cares all those boring simulator f1 type racing games ……nfs rules others sucks
silly troll
Your mom also did good for shutting down your brain at birth.
EA GAMES “CANCEL EVERYTHING”
expanding our franchises to be more socially-led with long-term live services that will engage global communities.
we recognise the need to evolve our games beyond pure play, providing experiences for fans to also watch, create and connect with their friends.”
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore
EA is at it again!
This and ther predatory greedy behavior is why I DON’T buy ther game anymore!
Never again!(I just made a minor exception when it came to Mass effect Legendary Edition it’s a classic after all… Then again I bought a cheap key so they did not get much of my money. )
I don’t get the point of saying you won’t buy their games and right after that you claim you bought an EA title, and a title that you could easily pirate if you reallly wanted, without feeding the beast, no matter the amount of money.
I just bought it for my collection and dirt cheap key witch EA won’t got much from.
It is too much for them even if it is 1 cent. Hell, even if you pirated this game, your attention and internet bandwith is still worthy for them. If you want to boycott you have to do it right.
they still received some money.
Piracy is the future. As already mentioned, piracy increases traffic for their game, so make sure you don’t seed after you download it.
Still amazes me that piracy is most ineffective when they are most needed nowadays.
or use a direct download or usenet service for your games. I don’t f*king trust torrents for sh*t.
says greedy buy pays for me:le
Big F for Codemasters who sought better future accepting EA’s offer.
Mainline DiRT series has been poor since 3 but to not get anymore DiRT Rally games would be a shame. Also I think it’s quite funny what happened to SM, they really deserved it tbh.
Oh y’all DON’T like Need For Speed Anymore?
Step 1: Buy the competition
Step 2: Cancel the games that have destroyed your tired @$$ IP
Step 3: Get Fuq’d
Success ???
my toughts exactly.
EA bought competition to later close the departament,same if i was very rich and bought Mc’Donalds…just to close it because i owned Burgerking.
If you don’t want others to control what your company does, don’t sell it. Selling out to Codemasters made this possible. In a world where Zenimax/BETHESDA were bought by another company, no company is too big to buy. You can’t sell out to one publisher and expect them to remain your sole owner for a long time. It could have been Microsoft instead of EA and that would have been no better. They would have canceled the project for sure, after all it’s a competitor to whatever they want to do with the Forza franchise.
Project Cars 3 was a slap in the face for fans of this series.
They wanted a new audience that does not care about sim racing games so in the end all they’ve got is EA with a death sentence.
I don’t want to connect watch and create content. I just want to play the game.
You have to make a pact with the devil so your brand can survive, like Bioware did. Wrong to put the name there since EA still find the brand useful
F*CK EA!
PC3 was bad from a sim pov and there are plenty of better sims anyways. Hard to think they’d nix Dirt though, still a big seller even if it sucked after 3. The rally ones were good though, even if it was too rallyX focused. EA would ruin them anyways, mercy kill.
I will NEVER forgive them for what they did to pandemic. Mercenaries 3 anyone??
Welcome to EA Graveyard
For the Love of Christ, people, stop giving EA money!
that demo presentation for spore, and what we got…man f*ck ea I want what they presented.
Told ya, they just want that F1 license from CodeMaster to create F1 Ultimate Team and ditch the rest
What? The new project cars wasn’t ghetto enough?
They could just rename it NFS Dirt or NFS Pro street again
EA being EA, buying the competition and closing it, no more Dirt Rally, the best Rally simulator out there because the WRC official game is a piece of Sh***t
Okay now this is a nono,
Project cars okay, no one really played the last game
BUT THEY DID WHAT TO MY DIRT???
This is not okay i grew up with the dirt games and have always played them since Dirt 2
I have owned every one of them Except Dirt 5
AND NOW THEY ARE CANCELING THIS SH*T???
F*CK EA GREEDY F*CKS
They are buying out the competition and canceling their games
This is unacceptable
They already ruined/canceld BATTLEFIELD, BURNOUT, GRID, MIRRORS EDGE, TITANFALL and now they wanna cancel 2 more franchises??
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.