Project CARS, it's over! The license is indeed abandoned by Electronic Arts, which has just made the announcement through our colleagues at Gamesindustry.biz, explaining that it has no future in the very busy catalog of the publisher. It must be said that since the acquisition of Codemasters in 2021, the American giant has found itself with a plethora of racing games in its hands, some duplicating others. Between Need for Speed, F1, GRID, DiRT and soon WRC, it is visibly difficult for Project CARS to coexist with the others, especially since efforts are now concentrated on open-world racing games (Need for Speed ) and licensed ones like F1 and WRC. This decision has an immediate impact, with the total halt of all ongoing projects. The fate of Slighty Mad Studios employees is unknown at this time, but Electronic Arts is committed to finding new positions for its last.
Decisions like these are very difficult to make, but they allow us to focus on areas where we believe we're delivering the best experiences possible, ones that fans will love. We have decided to focus on strong licenses of our catalog of racing games, in particular those under license and in open world, without forgetting the expansion of our franchises so that they adapt more to long-term services, able to engage our communities around the world.
We are in contact with everyone who is affected by this decision, to place them in suitable roles in our EA Sports and racing catalog, as well as other EA studios, wherever we can. Our priority is to support our employees as much as possible in this transition.
We recall that Slightly Mad Studios became a Codemasters property in 2019 after the acquisition of the latter, after many years of collaboration with Bandai Namco Games.
