That sound you can hear is me sighing into the steering wheel of my virtual Lancia Delta. Codemasters has announced that it’s “pausing development plans on future rally titles” now it’s finished adding stuff to EA Sports WRC, with the official WRC licence being revealed to moving on at the same time.
It’s not officially been termed as a concrete end to a lineage of iconic rally titles that runs all the way back to 1998’s Colin McRae Rally, but the statement sure reads like it could turn out to be a goodbye to Codies making such games, pending studio owner EA suddenly changing its mind.
“Every great journey eventually finds its finish line, and today, we announce that we’ve reached the end of the road working on WRC,” Codemasters wrote, “After releasing EA SPORTS WRC in 2023, the 2024 season, including the recently released Hard Chargers Content pack, will be our last expansion.
“For now, we are pausing development plans on future rally titles. Rest assured, EA SPORTS WRC will continue to be available for existing and new players.
“Our WRC partnership was a culmination of sorts for our Codemasters journey with off-road racing, spanning decades through titles like Colin McRae Rally, and DiRT. We’ve provided a home for every rally enthusiast, striving tirelessly to push the boundaries and deliver the exhilarating thrill of driving on the ragged edge. We’ve brought together incredibly talented racing developers, worked with some of the sport’s icons, and had the opportunity to share our love of rallying.”
While it did finish by thanking folks that “have and continue to be part of our rally journey”, a lot of the language there – the likes of “culmination”, “provided a home”, and “had the opportunity” – sound potentially terminal to me.
At the same time, the list of reasons we’ve got to hold on to that hope that this pause is just a pause has come with the news that the WRC partnership that came with Codemasters re-acquiring that series’ official licence back in 2020 has run its course. The racing series itself has acknowledged this, writing on socials that the “WRC gaming franchise is going in an ambitious new direction with more news coming in the near future.”
Codemasters’ deal with the championship was reported to run to 2027, and instead we’ve only ended up getting one recent rally game from the studio with full WRC backing before this announcement of it going by the wayside in 2025. EA Sports WRC wasn’t perfect – it suffered from some technical issues that largely seemed like they could be linked to an EA-mandated engine change and struggled to match its brilliant predecessor Dirt Rally 2.0, but in my view it wasn’t a million miles away from that lofty benchmark set by something likely close to the very same group of talented devs.
Certainly not bad enough to warrant potentially cutting and running from rally games altogether. Not that it likely is to blame. With EA having bought Codies in 2021, the year after the studio did that WRC deal, I’d bet my house on this simply coming down to spreadsheets. Rally games are niche, and the publisher that had already laid off devs at Codemasters in 2023 – and let’s not forget, enacted more layoffs across its workforce just the other day – probably didn’t see them as enough of a cash cow.
It’s the reality of the modern AAA games industry, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck ass.
We can’t have nice things that just do well with their long-established audience when corporate isn’t getting in the way, and likely produce solid returns. The bigwigs want to play it safe while staying fat and happy, which is both incredibly disappointing and nauseatingly fitting when it comes to pausing development of games about going flat out even when you’re in doubt, because there’s no worthwhile reward without some risk.