DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Industry is that broken chasing graphics and un wanted bloat that multiple studios now need to support titles. Absolute mess.
Codemasters basically shattered, F1 25 could be the last Formula 1 game by EA
- Thread starter ShaiKhulud1989
- Start date
- Rumor Game Dev
Hypereides
Member
Frankly EA ought to close up shop and leave this industry. Apart from a few exceptions, they're a destructive force upon the industry and really don't belong here. None of the people at top actually care or understand to genuinely create a game with well-intentioned meaning. It goes against their primary hunger for money and eclipses any artistic integrity they may have had. If they left, they would take a lot of cherished IPs with them, but I bet it would allow the community to breathe a sigh of relief.
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YeulEmeralda
Linux User
Unfortunately you can't really do a F1 game on a indie budget.
The license alone demands triple A.
The license alone demands triple A.
Insanemaelstrom
Member
I wonder just how many studios at EA are now working on fifa.
RickMasters
Member
I've always wondered why Sony never ported a bunch of retro psygnosis games. Psygnosis used to a be a powerhouse during the amiga and 16 but console days.
I still have Destruction derby, G-police and wipeout on PS1. They were making some interesting games during the early days of 3D polygon games. They just sorted if faded away, sadly.
MarV0
Member
So sad for Codemasters, so many fond memories.
Imagine making awesome racing games as an independent studio for over 30 years, surviving a financial crisis, three recessions and a pandemic only to be gutted by EA and turned into a FIFA supporting studio.
FUCK EA, they're never ever getting a single penny from me.
Imagine making awesome racing games as an independent studio for over 30 years, surviving a financial crisis, three recessions and a pandemic only to be gutted by EA and turned into a FIFA supporting studio.
FUCK EA, they're never ever getting a single penny from me.
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Tams
Member
No thanks.
While licensing can lead to great success from name recognition alone, if you've got it and then lose it (which one day you inevitably will), it can be a massive blow.
Polyphony have been plenty successful without licensing for the most part, so should stay that way. Brand licensing of cars is enough.
JohnSpartanLee
Member
Unreal Engine stutters killed Codemasters. :|
Radical_3d
Member
Saw the titular and came to post the same comic. Well played, OP…
F1 25 could be the last Codemasters game and the end of the franchise in the hands of Electronic Arts.
According to LinkedIn profiles of employees of Codemasters Southam, the former studio behind the previously canceled WRC is now working on EA Sports FC as a support studio. Per Insider Gaming's Mike Straw, EA is planning to merge current F1 developer Codemasters Birmingham with some other EA studio. Codemasters Cheshire has already been quietly merged with Guildford-based Criterion.
It's no coincidence either. In 2025 EA license and contract for F1 is expiring, though there is a possibility of renewal for 2026 and 2027 if certain milestones are met. That being said, according to Straw, EA thinks the whole deail is 'iffy' and not enthusiastic about the contract renewal. Current Codemasters employees will probably work to support EA FC and Battlefield.
This is indirectly confirmed by the fact that Codemasters X-account was deleted in a swift fashion after WRC cancellation. Considering, that no one is restoring it, this cannot be written off as SMM mistake or misunderstanding.
In the end, the icon of British game development with almost 40 years of history has come to an inglorious end, and EA's graveyard has one more fresh tombstone.
Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
The makers of Colin McRae were considered mid tier?
chromatic9
Member
It's a tricky situation for these types of games, as costs and expectations grow they become unviable to produce for a small audience.
Hopefully someone else can step in. We might be looking at some side project or a few years of poorer games as F1 try to create a studio. F1 will have to climb down the license fee but I expect the same kind of silliness we saw with the FIFA body.
Hopefully someone else can step in. We might be looking at some side project or a few years of poorer games as F1 try to create a studio. F1 will have to climb down the license fee but I expect the same kind of silliness we saw with the FIFA body.
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kpopSuperstar
Member
The biggest racing game is Mario Kart. It dwarfs all those franchises combined.
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
It's not just about brand recognition. It's about getting way more racing and way more high quality racing.
PD is currently held back by their size and scope. This would be a way to organically increase both.
EA has had exclusive NFL rights for over 20 years now and they haven't lost licensing. They gave up the FIFA license and they're just as popular as ever without it. Not the massive blow you're describing.
Through Polyphony Digital we can get the best compliment of racing that we've ever gotten. It would be huge for the racing genre.
Let's say that 70 million units of Mario Kart have sold. Let's discount how many of those were simple bundles for a second and realize that across PC and Console Gran Turismo 8 could probably sell ~15-20 million units. With annual season passes to the tune of say 100 dollars per year. If even half that number of users partakes, you're looking at an additional 7.5-10 million units per year (at 100 dollars). Mario Kart came out in 2017, so 8 years. Let's say the game sold exclusively for 60 dollars.
That's 4.2 billion dollars for Mario Kart 8.
Now let's do GT8 at 70 dollars for 15 million units 1.05 billion dollars. Now let's add 8 years of seasonal passes at 100 dollars with 7.5 million users. That's 6 billion dollars. That's a total of 7.05 billion dollars. And that doesn't even include general MTX.
That's exactly why I think an umbrella game works best. You massively reduce development costs with a shared unified engine. As long as the content keeps coming out and people keep tuning in. You probably also release 2 new Gran Turismo games per generation refreshing the engine. One cross gen with the previous generation and one cross gen with the next generation.
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HJuggernaut
Member
never heard of that game but other than overlord which was mid/ok and a bunch of car games i don't recall codemasters doing anything all that remarkable
ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Well, basically current F1 where swearing is a pushable offense?Sony are about to give us an F1 live service games, with a cell shade style and a diverse set of drivers.
diffusionx
Gold Member
How the hell is BioWare still around?
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
It's crazy how much the UK racing development scene has essentially collapsed.
Activision bought Bizzare Creations and folded them within 4 years. Sony shuttered Studio Liverpool, then bought them again in Firesprite (and will probably close them again soon). Sony closed Evolution Studios which became a part of Codemasters, but got absorbed into Codemasters, which is probably shutting down. Sony also closed BigBig Studios.
A lot of these people have moved to Sumo digital and Lucid and who knows how long until these studios fold...
Activision bought Bizzare Creations and folded them within 4 years. Sony shuttered Studio Liverpool, then bought them again in Firesprite (and will probably close them again soon). Sony closed Evolution Studios which became a part of Codemasters, but got absorbed into Codemasters, which is probably shutting down. Sony also closed BigBig Studios.
A lot of these people have moved to Sumo digital and Lucid and who knows how long until these studios fold...
Perrott
Member
F1 and WRC licenses going full circle and back to Sony, huh.
That'd be pretty sick just from the standpoint of Sony having to set up additional development operations that'd handle those additional modes within GT, meaning more racing-focused manpower within PS Studios, bringing us closer to the potential one-off revivals of beloved arcade PS racers such as MotorStorm, Wipeout or even DriveClub way down the line. Let a man dream.
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
Even back in the day, I thought it was weird that Sony had these expensive licenses but these lesser studios (for lack of a better word) were working on the games. I always wondered why Polyphony Digital was not involved in using those licenses.
Like imagine you have what was at the time the best racing car developer and not one but two really expensive racing organization licenses and they just were like yup we'll have the Liverpool studios work on these.
I think something like this could probably save Firesprite and a lot of these jobs from Codemasters. Having them work on support to Gran Turismo.
That being said, I don't think any of those franchise are coming back.
hououinkyouma00
Gold Member
I'd much rather see Sony bring Liverpool back from the dead then Polyphony Digital taking over this stuff. Let Polyphony handle Gran Turismo, and let a new Studio Liverpool take over for F1 and WRC.
Perrott
Member
Liverpool Studio have long been back in the game, even as a Sony first-party team. They're called
Firesprite although they've let go of their racing-adjacent staff following the demise of the troubled Twisted Metal live-service project a year ago.
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
I don't see that happening and it doesn't give you the economies of scale that makes it worth the licensing costs to make these games, which is why EA is backing out. How would this be any more successful than Codemasters?
Killer8
Member
EA has mismanaged them (how else do you explain the fall-off in F1 sales year on year after the acquisition?), but the studio itself should get some of the blame too.
WRC was a disaster. The engine change from Dirt Rally 2.0 absolutely fucked them over. The rationale was that Unreal Engine was needed for the longer tracks but then the result was an uglier, stuttering mess of a game. When their community manager is crowdsourcing help on Reee to solve technical issues with the engine, you know the situation is fucked. Some of the advise was to literally ask Epic for help and he thinks this is good advice. "Codemasters" my ass.
And on the flipside, some of their other products could've done with an engine change years ago. F1 is still hobbling along with the outdated EGO engine where cars look like they're floating when it rains. Although I personally thought Dirt 5 could occasionally look good with the right TV settings, its proprietary engine that the ex-Onrush team used underwhelmed many players.
Dirt was another franchise that was mishandled so badly they had to re-boot it back to its roots with the Dirt Rally spin-off series. No one gives a shit about gymkhana! You had ex-MotorStorm developers in your employ and you did nothing with them!
WRC was a disaster. The engine change from Dirt Rally 2.0 absolutely fucked them over. The rationale was that Unreal Engine was needed for the longer tracks but then the result was an uglier, stuttering mess of a game. When their community manager is crowdsourcing help on Reee to solve technical issues with the engine, you know the situation is fucked. Some of the advise was to literally ask Epic for help and he thinks this is good advice. "Codemasters" my ass.
And on the flipside, some of their other products could've done with an engine change years ago. F1 is still hobbling along with the outdated EGO engine where cars look like they're floating when it rains. Although I personally thought Dirt 5 could occasionally look good with the right TV settings, its proprietary engine that the ex-Onrush team used underwhelmed many players.
Dirt was another franchise that was mishandled so badly they had to re-boot it back to its roots with the Dirt Rally spin-off series. No one gives a shit about gymkhana! You had ex-MotorStorm developers in your employ and you did nothing with them!
Calverz
Member
Tams
Member
Bloody hell. He'd have been better off coming here. At least we'd have laughed at him, and told him to bugger off and do his job.
Neo_game
Member
Codemasters only do racing games and racing games are now not doing good. T10 are also struggling and EA NFS series is also pretty much dead.
I am big F1 fan and we need a good F1 game for sure. Not sure who is going to buy the license though as racing genre is now pretty bad state.
I am big F1 fan and we need a good F1 game for sure. Not sure who is going to buy the license though as racing genre is now pretty bad state.
Calverz
Member
Agreed. It's a complete mess and it's not viable. AI isn't the answer either.
"Gaming industry"
What a sad state this industry has turned into when it comes to AAA development. These braindead publishers have no fucking clue how to manage any studio.
The Crash can't come soon enough!
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
Great posts. I think gamers are *maybe* too quick to doll out blame. At the end of the day blame is probably too heavy a word for what causes the downfall of projects like this.
Inherently, you have to look at the cost EA paid to buy Codemasters and the licensing for WRC and F1. Two expensive licenses and having to maintain them both at the same time while trying to get return on investment for EA, meaning they're probably not looking to go on a hiring spree.
At the same time the Ego engine being dated doesn't put Codemasters in a great situation in terms of making modern racing games. So what's the solution? Going to Unreal Engine despite most of your staff not having experience with it having used Ego for years and mind you they're still using Ego for F1 and only using Unreal for WRC. Now you're paying licensing costs for WRC and licensing costs to Epic for Unreal. That itself was always going to be unsustainable.
I feel like for anyone to get a financially beneficial result from the F1 and/or the WRC licenses, they have to have a modern proprietary engine, the money to get the license or licenses.
Balancing both F1 and WRC on an aging engine was probably just too much for Codemasters and the clock was ticking given how much EA dropped on them.
The licensing agreements with FIA and Liberty Media probably need to be adjusted. Licensing can make games more immersive, but I think every is seeing dollar signs because gaming is becoming bigger business and the licensing costs are getting out of hand. We saw that with EA and FIFA and I'm guessing something similar happened with MLB and Sony and the cost were kept down in exchange for going multiplatform, otherwise MLB would have looked to license out to other studios like Konami.
SkylineRKR
Member
I think current EA WRC is the best rally game of them all. The game came a long way from its kind of rocky launch. I play on PS5 and the perf is generally good, I don't think its anything worse than Dirt Rally 2.0. The game has the official license, 18 locations (20 with the DLC), and most importantly; the complete edition has basically every single car I wanted in a Rally game. The 90's Xsara, Megane and Ibiza kit cars, the Saxo, Quattro, the 206, the infamous Focus '99 from Colin.. its all there.
The Complete edition cost 15 bucks right now. I actually bought it while already having vanilla, because its so cheap (its 5 bucks cheaper than DR2.0 GOTY). I just love it and I have yet to touch the Maestros moments. I have DR 2.0 GOTY as well, but I think EA WRC is better. Its more responsive with pad, cars feel less wobbly and it simply has the myriad of locations, tracks and huge car list to match. Plus the license.
For 15 bucks its worth a shot and there won't be a new one in a while. These games tend to be delisted also.
The Complete edition cost 15 bucks right now. I actually bought it while already having vanilla, because its so cheap (its 5 bucks cheaper than DR2.0 GOTY). I just love it and I have yet to touch the Maestros moments. I have DR 2.0 GOTY as well, but I think EA WRC is better. Its more responsive with pad, cars feel less wobbly and it simply has the myriad of locations, tracks and huge car list to match. Plus the license.
For 15 bucks its worth a shot and there won't be a new one in a while. These games tend to be delisted also.
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Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
That's what someone like
Calverz
doesn't understand. There aren't many companies who could make this work long term in a way that benefits all parties, particularly gamers. We need some consolidation in the racing genre. There are probably too many racing games and not enough people buying. There needs to be a greater hook, greater value, and efficiency.
Who has the money to afford the licenses, the marketing, the talent and tech to make the game. It's a short list and EA and Codemasters were probably on top of the list and even they weren't successful.
Hensen Juang
Member
hououinkyouma00
Gold Member
I never said it was plausible, just that it's what I would want. I don't want to see Polyphony working on anything but GT and bringing TT back.
Isa
Member
EA is like a mob boss with a kink tendency for knocking off it's own members for failing to perform yet showing a few moments of restraint staying the killer's hand when it comes to preferential treatment(DICE, Bioware). I've hated them for years, decades really, but for me most of the damage was already done in the 90's. The NFL fiasco was the nail in the coffin, they are the consumer's enemy.
HAYA8U5A
Member
They had started to go downhill before EA and then that just made things worse. The F1 25 gameplay reveal says it all about how far they have fell off when pretty much the full 15 minute video is just showing races on reverse tracks like that is supposed to be some big deal and amazing innovation. Hopefully F1 and WRC find a good home.
xrnzaaas
Member
1.2 billion isn't a fortune for a publisher like EA and I think originally they wanted Codemasters to help with or take over Need for Speed IP. Obviously that didn't happen, because this is EA and how they're running their studios is a mess.
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
It's honestly sad. Codemasters have been consistently good for as long as I can remember.
EA - Barely makes traditional games anymore. Handful of successful GaaS and yearly sports slop.
Ubisoft - On death's door. Never found a successful GaaS outside r6 which is old and busted now. Probably will not survive the next few years.
Warner - On death's door. No successful GaaS. Lost in the sauce. Probably will not survive the next few years.
All 3 of these big western publishers completely lost the plot at some point after 360 gen.
Judge Magister
Member
I respected Codemasters but tbh last F1 game i played was:
Crayon
Member
I just started playing g-police last night! It was too late to play much but so far, so good. I'm a huge psygnosis fan and wanted to play this since it was in magazines.
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SkylineRKR
Member
I respected Codemasters but tbh last F1 game i played was:
This was a prime example of a game being docked for being a PS3 exclusive. I did enjoy F1 2010 (the 1st one by Codies), pit bug aside. But this game smoked it and all its sequels in sheer graphics, sense of speed, learning curve. It might be THE best F1 game on console ever.
Perrott
Member
By the PS3 generation? Absolutely -- they were a AA racing games studio.
The high tier of that generation were Polyphony Digital, Evolution Studios, Criterion Games, Turn10, Playground Games and Bizzare Creations (pre-Activision), both from the budgets they got access to as well as the scope and craftmanship of their respective titles.
Killer8
Member
I won't pretend to know exactly what should've been done with their engines but they had a few routes they could've gone down.
If they stuck with Ego (which they've used since the PS3 gen) then they should've upgraded it enough last-gen to handle longer track lengths they might be using in the future. When engine upgrades are done it's common to over-shoot the final requirements eg. we can now handle so many lights, or ray-tracing, or up to 100km² maps, even if realistically they might only utilize a fraction of those features. You can't be fighting against limitations of your own tech and you have to be prepared for the next-gen, because people will be expecting more.
The thing is that Codemasters developers were active on the forums over the years and explained all these limitations back in the late 2010s, so it isn't like they didn't have time to get a solution together within Ego. They also had an ideal candidate to experiment with a new engine - the Dirt Rally spin-off, yet they just used Ego for that again.
And if the switch to Unreal Engine at the time they did was unavoidable, why on Earth did they opt for UE4 and not UE5!? They ended up with the exact same stutter issues, but at least they could've utilized the more advanced features of UE5 to allow the team to visually punch above their weight. First impressions matter and if most people are thinking to themselves "this looks worse than the PS4 game", it's just over. And it wasn't even that it was a cross-gen game! WRC only released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles...
EDIT:
Here is what Milestone, who have been been making MotoGP games since the PS2 days, are managing to do now on UE5, having made numerous engine switches over the years including to UE4 during the PS4 days:
Their other series, Ride, switched to UE4 for Ride 3. This is Ride 5 on PS5 now, still running on UE4, with 7+ years of experience with the engine under their belt:
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Randall365
Member
I loved the Dizzy games in the 80s/90s.
Have to be honest and say I am not that bothered about anything they did since then, but still sad to see.
Have to be honest and say I am not that bothered about anything they did since then, but still sad to see.
