Following its acquisition by Electronic Arts in 2021, Codemasters is committed to delivering no less than one big AAA each year. After GRID Legends which was released last month, we already know that the British studio is working hard on its next ambitious project scheduled for 2023 as several job offers published at the end of 2021 suggested.
According to Tom Henderson, this one should (unsurprisingly?) be linked to the license WRC for which the company acquired the operating rights in 2020 to the detriment of Nacon. Information which, as always, is nothing official and must therefore be taken with a grain of salt!
Exit DiRT Rally 3.0Hello WRC… But in what state ?
Via the Exputer site, the insider claims, based on several sources a priori familiar with the company’s internal plans and the fact that the DiRT Games Twitter page has been renamed EA SPORTS Rally a few weeks ago that not only this AAA is related to the series WRC but that in addition its existence would have (logically?) pushed the studio to put the next DiRT Rally in the closet at the end of 2021while its design had begun before the acquisition of the franchise rights.
Other information, although the title in question is not expected before 2023, its development would experience complications which would be due to problems present for some time within the QA (quality assurance) department.
Also according to Tom Henderson, due to questionable management by EA and Codemasters executives, the QA would have seen its workforce go from 200 to 120 employees in a few months, the fault of the agreements deemed unconventional offered by the British studio. With the takeover by the American firm, the employees of this department hoped that the internal policy would change but that was obviously not the case, which would have led to these numerous non-renewals of contracts.
A situation which, if real, is quite worrying for the future productions of the company especially when we know that the updates deployed for F1 2021 sometimes tended to add almost as many bugs as they fixed and GRID Legends didn’t come out in completely pristine condition either.
While waiting to find out if all this information is true or not, remember that, in the absence of an EA Play Live conference this year, the next big and ambitious Codemasters project should be unveiled through an individual presentation. like the games of F1 whose next opus could, according to rumors relayed at the beginning of March by Tom Henderson, accommodate supercars as well as support cross-play and virtual reality.