Which Studio Could Revolutionise The Vacant WRC Licence?

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Mk1 Ford Escort RS1600. Image: EA Sports / Codemasters
With the breaking news that Electronic Arts ditched the WRC licence last week, our community had its say on who it wanted to see take over the licence in the future!

After the news broke that EA Sports would be dropping the WRC licence moving forward, we polled our community to find out which studios they would like to see take over the licence in the future.

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Colin McRae's 1999 WRC Focus. Image: EA Sports / Codemasters

There are just 2 ways to innovate in rally imo:

1) Soft body damage model with real cars and official liveries;
2) Hardcore physics.

Both would be insane and huge fun, just 1 of these 2 elements would still be enough to celebrate. - achi.nin
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With the idea of soft body damage and hardcore driving physics, the attention must be turned towards Richard Burns Rally, a title often labelled as the most hardcore rally simulator available on the market. However, the official rally mode was added in the most recent update to the softbody physics sandbox, BeamNG.drive. Consequently, this new highly anticipated mode has sparked a significant return to form for the player numbers,

It is no secret that BeamNG does its own thing. Their game has been in early access for over a decade now, and the entire ecosystem around the title is so individual and creative that not many other sims or titles can come close to offering what BeamNG can. However, this is the biggest downfall for the idea of the team taking on an official license. The game does not suit officially licensed content with the lore and environment building BeamNG has undergone in the past years, especially.

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BeamNG's Civetta Bolide. Image: BeamNG

BeamNG was our community's top pick, and while it would be a fantastic addition to the rally mode, we can not see the developers throwing away all of their hard work building this alternate universe with their win cars and brands for the sake of the WRC licence.

The future of the real-life WRC​

OverTake member @Rodger Davies raised a fantastic point in the poll comments about the state of the real series. Without any official confirmation yet, the top split of the WRC will likely be down to two manufacturers and, consequently, an even smaller pool of drivers.

With this loss, a further addition to the yearly release format that EA is well drilled in would not be enough to allocate the resources. The WRC licence appears to have become untenable for such a big company, like EA Sports, to take a risk on, with the future of the real series looking rather dim.

Blessed or cursed? WRC is not in a good place at the moment, likely next year will have 2 cars in the top class. The series is changing locations so frequently it's going to be very difficult to create high quality stage content to keep up.

I imagine for it to be vaguely viable to have a product capable of representing the real WRC, it'll have to use the Unreal engine, so IMO I hope Milestone can get it back and make it work - they've done good things with Ride/MotoGP games and even the development and rider market features on the MotoGP games would be great to have.

Fingers crossed if an Unreal dev does pick it up, EA can sell the fantastic stage assets from WRC to them, because it would be a shame if amazing stages were tossed out the window yet again. - Rodger Davies
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Poll Results.jpg


A studio suggested in the comments that could do something special with the license was KW Studios. One aspect that their original product, RaceRoom, does not have is any form of off-road-based racing or driving. This would give the studio an entirely new direction to try and create something new and from scratch.

Here's a chance for KW to ditch RaceRoom and finally work on a fresh product. - Peter Kerényi
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The other big hitters, such as Kunos Simulazioni, Reiza Studios, Bugbear Entertainment, and iRacing, all have massive projects in their fields that, if let slip, could affect their fan bases. Piling on a WRC licence to something like Assetto Corsa EVO could be potential brand suicide, and the same could be said for Wreckfest.

“As a business, we are constantly evolving to meet the growing needs of our players and driving greater focus across our portfolio. This has led us to look at reducing some roles, while we redeploy as many as possible against our strategic priorities." - Electronic Arts
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Of course, this is part speculation as it currently stands. When OverTake reached out to Electronic Arts for comment, we received the above quote and a firm no to any further comment. As it unfolds, we will bring you the latest breaking news on the EA Sports WRC licence drama.

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Renault Clio Rally3. Image: EA Sports WRC

The end product of 'Reducing some roles' could ultimately mean the demise of Codemasters as a publisher, a real kick in the teeth for those rally fans and F1 game fans from the 2000s and into the 2010s. Codemasters is an iconic name in the sim racing space, and if this really is the beginning of the end, then it has been a pleasure, Codemasters...

What do you think about EA Sports potentially dissolving Codemasters and moving on from the WRC license? Who is next in line to take over? Let us know in the comments down below!
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Connor Minniss
Connor Minniss
Website Content Editor & Motorsport Photographer aiming to bring you the best of the best within the world of sim racing.

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Comments

H
EA bought a studio, made it make a bad game and release it too early, then they close the studio.
Why I'm not surprised?
Honestly I always try to avoid buying games published by EA, there's a reason they won the "worst company" award more than a time.
You may not like Ian Bell, but maybe people should read what he said about NFS: Shift 3, pCars3, pCars4 and how EA tries to screw up his studios, I had really low expectations for this WRC title, and am more than happy to see the license no more in EA hands. I also hope they sell Codemasters to some other publisher and don't close the studio as they often do with acquisitions.
 
S
No one will take it. WRC is slowly dying in real world, who would make a game out of that with 2 manufacturers in the main serie ? It is such a niche genre anyway. Glory days of rallying are long gone.
 
R
shadow82 said:
No one will take it. WRC is slowly dying in real world, who would make a game out of that with 2 manufacturers in the main serie ? It is such a niche genre anyway. Glory days of rallying are long gone.
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I think that's an opportunity rather than an issue, but I doubt WRC Promoter will realise it. Create a game based on great seasons and rivalries from WRC history and use that to promote the modern sport.

Sadly, every WRC game the vintage content just feels 'tacked on' rather than part of the main game. Nowhere was this more apparent than EA/Codemasters' iteration, where Dirt Rally 2 allowed you to specialise in a '70s Group 4 career if you wanted to (apart from their idiotic decision to split the Stratos from the Escort)... then WRC meant you had three modern career classes.

OK, licencing vintage content is harder (especially is you manage to annoy Toyota like Codemasters evidently did), but get it right and there's a whole catalogue of nostalgia to tap into.
 
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Large Style
Peter Kerényi said:
DX12 won't magically improve their assets which are pretty outdated & low poly for today's standards already. I don't see how R3E could be refreshed effectively that would create hype in the sim community.
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Today's standards?!!?!! Most of our beloved sims are 10-12 years old at this point!!!

Sure RR is dated, but I feel that it's foundationally perfectly fine as it is (or at the very least as a base point) including their car models. Yes interiors are the weak point in most cars, even including drivers who when playing in VR have disturbingly misshapen bodies / legs, but IMHO the exterior models already look acceptable, even by "today's standards". Obviously new cars are still being brought out so it's not like they are as is from a decade+ ago.

DX12 should bring significant optimisation of the engine which would open the door to better lighting, weathers, night cycles - all the stuff that people normally complain about that's supposedly holding RR back from modern relevancy.

Besides, when I'm not racing F1 (EA) I'm still racing Raceroom as the handling & FFB are (at most times) a step above most other titles, including AC, ACC, AMS2, and maybe even rF2 - which will always trump graphics in my book.
 
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Peter Kerényi
Large Style said:
Today's standards?!!?!! Most of our beloved sims are 10-12 years old at this point!!!

Sure RR is dated, but I feel that it's foundationally perfectly fine as it is (or at the very least as a base point) including their car models. Yes interiors are the weak point in most cars, even including drivers who when playing in VR have disturbingly misshapen bodies / legs, but IMHO the exterior models already look acceptable, even by "today's standards". Obviously new cars are still being brought out so it's not like they are as is from a decade+ ago.

DX12 should bring significant optimisation of the engine which would open the door to better lighting, weathers, night cycles - all the stuff that people normally complain about that's supposedly holding RR back from modern relevancy.

Besides, when I'm not racing F1 (EA) I'm still racing Raceroom as the handling & FFB are (at most times) a step above most other titles, including AC, ACC, AMS2, and maybe even rF2 - which will always trump graphics in my book.
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I usually think of models as interiors because that's what I always see. Exteriors are... acceptable, let's say. But any big investment expects the game to be up for a lot of years and "today's standards" will keep moving ahead, so that's not a positive into the future.

Implementing modern features such as rain and night is also not a trivial task with the amount of content available. We still don't even have proper dash displays, I don't know, I don't see how such a big rework could be pulled off when looking at the current pace of development.

Just start from zero, RaceRoom 2, new engine, modern features, discard the outdated content, add new content.
 
xDriver69x
Premium
Large Style said:
Today's standards?!!?!! Most of our beloved sims are 10-12 years old at this point!!!

Sure RR is dated, but I feel that it's foundationally perfectly fine as it is (or at the very least as a base point) including their car models. Yes interiors are the weak point in most cars, even including drivers who when playing in VR have disturbingly misshapen bodies / legs, but IMHO the exterior models already look acceptable, even by "today's standards". Obviously new cars are still being brought out so it's not like they are as is from a decade+ ago.

DX12 should bring significant optimisation of the engine which would open the door to better lighting, weathers, night cycles - all the stuff that people normally complain about that's supposedly holding RR back from modern relevancy.

Besides, when I'm not racing F1 (EA) I'm still racing Raceroom as the handling & FFB are (at most times) a step above most other titles, including AC, ACC, AMS2, and maybe even rF2 - which will always trump graphics in my book.
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If lower poly representation is ok, MotorTown WRC might be the way. Imagine not just driving but being able to have setup the winches and get fans involved to be able to help get cars back on their wheels and the racing back underway after some silliness and tumble.

Lots of room for expanding sim racing to be more realistic in many functional ways! Especially if lower 10-12 year old low poly approaches are ok.
 
B
I can only see Milestone as a realistic option. They know how to make rally games, they have years of experience in Unreal Engine that they use for all their titles for years now, they have the experience of multi-plaform releases.
 
Thenextinline
Come on, everybody knows that the only one who can do it is Ian Bell....

In all seriousness, i really enjoyed driving all wheel drive cars in PC2 in the snow (after properly tuning the diffs), and the rallycross cars. But anyway i don't think there's somebody out there who can do it other than the developers of RBR or the developers of it's mods.

Just keep in mind that the developers who made Rally Evolved (Evolution Studios) which is one of the best rally games i've ever played, are now part of Codemasters and EA. So if this team couldn't make a decent rally game, i don't think anybody can.

Maybe Milestones. SLRE was janky AF and very much unfinished, but it wasn't bad in terms of driving. KT showed promise with WRC 8 and 9 but didn't even care to model the wheels and tires properly and their engine sucks.
 
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Durge Driven
Premium
What gives deleting my post.

"Get your mother to push the car"

Cheech & Chong
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"Get your mother to make WRC engine" ...like so ? ....my point is there is no one else to make hardcore offroad

The WRC sims so far are imho a laugh when it comes to physics engine, tyres, FFB, terrain leave much to be desired and imho none of these studios or physics gurus are capable.

Needs a concerted group effort....imho.

shrugs

Of course you take it as I being disrespectful to your mother ........... honestly, grow up.
 
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D
My most wanted rally game would be the terrain degradation of 'spintires' VR from AMS2. Long stages and audio from EA WRC with the moddability of RBR, trueforce support from Dirt Rally 2 with improved and more hardcore physics of EA WRC
 

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With WRC leaving EA/Codemasters :Who will be blessed with the new WRC license?

  • Sabre

    Votes: 13 1.9%

  • KT Racing

    Votes: 61 8.8%

  • Milestone

    Votes: 87 12.5%

  • The Last Garage

    Votes: 11 1.6%

  • BeamNG

    Votes: 135 19.4%

  • iRacing

    Votes: 107 15.4%

  • Straight4 Studios

    Votes: 8 1.1%

  • Bugbear Entertainment

    Votes: 25 3.6%

  • Motorsport Games / Studio 397

    Votes: 61 8.8%

  • Kunos Simulazioni

    Votes: 98 14.1%

  • Reiza Studios

    Votes: 67 9.6%

  • Other (add in the comments below)

    Votes: 23 3.3%
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