Seems to be just going back to the previous publisher, which didn’t exactly release amazing rally games when they had the license. Maybe they’ll surprise me, but I suspect Dirt Rally 2.0 and Richard Burns Rally will continue to be the main options for a while longer.
I wouldn’t hold your breath. Word is, those recent EA layoffs hit a lot of the Codemasters people, including the teams working on their rally games. They mostly kept the F1 team because that series inexplicably sells tons every release (never been an F1 fan myself, but there does seem to be an appetite for those games). Anyone not on the F1 team was moved to another internal EA team whose name escapes me at the moment and they’re working as a support team for others.
In a perfect world, sure, but I only know of one time when most of a team stayed together after being laid off and that was when Sony shut down Evolution Studios and around 80% of them were picked up by Codemasters. It’s not likely to happen again and the Nacon has multiple fully staffed racing teams, including the one that made the WRC games before EA bought Codemasters and destroyed them.
Yeah, it’s not likely to happen, but still EA wasn’t making good use of them. I always hate to see layoffs, but making people with knowledge available, especially when other studios end up with a demand for them, is good. I’m sure they won’t pick up the entire team, but I’d be surprised if some of them don’t end up there.
EA rarely makes good use of the devs it consumes and destroys, unfortunately. This isn’t even the first racing team that I was a fan of they’ve destroyed. Hell, it’s not even the first British racing team they’ve destroyed. They’re truly a plague on the industry.
While I definitely hope the people laid off all land on their feet, having a handful of people from a large team show up at another studio doesn’t really do anything for us. We’ll never get another DriveClub or OnRush or Dirt 5 because the magic that team made has been scattered to the winds.
We’ll never get the same thing, but I’m always hopeful that some of the people have the knowledge, resources, and desire to spin up new studios at least, where they can make the games they’ve always wanted to make but weren’t allowed to. Certainly they won’t all end up at the same place, and only a few with this studio, but their experience now gets spread to new places outside of EA where I think we can expect better things.
We’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully we get cool indie experiences, like The Art of Rally, as well as more expensive projects, like whatever the WRC game becomes.
Seems to be just going back to the previous publisher, which didn’t exactly release amazing rally games when they had the license. Maybe they’ll surprise me, but I suspect Dirt Rally 2.0 and Richard Burns Rally will continue to be the main options for a while longer.
I wouldn’t hold your breath. Word is, those recent EA layoffs hit a lot of the Codemasters people, including the teams working on their rally games. They mostly kept the F1 team because that series inexplicably sells tons every release (never been an F1 fan myself, but there does seem to be an appetite for those games). Anyone not on the F1 team was moved to another internal EA team whose name escapes me at the moment and they’re working as a support team for others.
But isn’t that a good thing for this? It means the old Codemasters team is no longer at EA, and maybe they’ll find a job here now.
In a perfect world, sure, but I only know of one time when most of a team stayed together after being laid off and that was when Sony shut down Evolution Studios and around 80% of them were picked up by Codemasters. It’s not likely to happen again and the Nacon has multiple fully staffed racing teams, including the one that made the WRC games before EA bought Codemasters and destroyed them.
Yeah, it’s not likely to happen, but still EA wasn’t making good use of them. I always hate to see layoffs, but making people with knowledge available, especially when other studios end up with a demand for them, is good. I’m sure they won’t pick up the entire team, but I’d be surprised if some of them don’t end up there.
EA rarely makes good use of the devs it consumes and destroys, unfortunately. This isn’t even the first racing team that I was a fan of they’ve destroyed. Hell, it’s not even the first British racing team they’ve destroyed. They’re truly a plague on the industry.
While I definitely hope the people laid off all land on their feet, having a handful of people from a large team show up at another studio doesn’t really do anything for us. We’ll never get another DriveClub or OnRush or Dirt 5 because the magic that team made has been scattered to the winds.
We’ll never get the same thing, but I’m always hopeful that some of the people have the knowledge, resources, and desire to spin up new studios at least, where they can make the games they’ve always wanted to make but weren’t allowed to. Certainly they won’t all end up at the same place, and only a few with this studio, but their experience now gets spread to new places outside of EA where I think we can expect better things.
We’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully we get cool indie experiences, like The Art of Rally, as well as more expensive projects, like whatever the WRC game becomes.
I was talking about Nacon (the new/old WRC publisher) not EA or Codemasters, but agreed.