In something of a surprise move, both Codemasters and the World Rally Championship’s social media channels have separately announced that the long-running WRC game franchise is heading elsewhere in the future.
The statement on Codies’ behalf is pretty conclusive, stating that the team has not only finished its work on WRC but is putting a pause on all development on any future rally titles too. It had, of course, recently released a new expansion for the title — called Hard Chargers — which brought some new cars, liveries, and stages, and this will be the last support that the title receives.
2024’s iteration was already pretty surprising, as it saw the first time that a new season was marked with an update to bring current content rather than a whole new game — as had been the case under former developer KT Racing.
That means that EA SPORTS WRC will go down as the only WRC title developed by Codemasters since acquiring the licence, and the only one published by EA since acquiring Codemasters.
With the developer also confirming that it’s no longer working on rally titles, it means we probably won’t be looking forward to a new game in the DIRT series any time soon either — and the F1 franchise will be the only one in its portfolio.
The bad news comes on the back of some further layoffs at EA over the past few days, with the company contracting yet further in rounds of redundancies that go back at least two years. It’s unclear if Codemasters has been impacted to any great degree.
As for the future of WRC, the championship itself has some coy things to say in its own statement. After thanking EA Sports and Codemasters for its efforts on the title, WRC notes that the “franchise is going in an ambitious new direction”, about which there will be further news coming shortly.
That does lead to some questions about where the franchise is going next, as there’s not exactly a lot of studios out there making proper rally titles.
While a return to KT Racing and Nacon is perhaps unlikely, previous developer Milestone is a potential route, with parent publisher Plaion recently missing out on Project Motor Racing. Perhaps the word “new” suggests a wholly new developer — like Dakar Desert Rally’s Saber Interactive, or someone else entirely.
Hopefully we’ll learn more about the series’ fate in due course.
