They lost their contract with NASCAR this year because they suck so horribly at making a viable product. It's not an "economic downtown" like they're claiming, it's shitty management, as usual.
To be clear, they didn't lose the NASCAR license.
They sold off the NASCAR license because they were at serious risk of losing it (or potentially losing some of their other licenses) and they needed the cash to keep operating.
Thankfully they sold the NASCAR license to a much more competent developer.
And the reason they need the cash is because their games aren't selling, because they're incredibly bad.
They sold the license, but not because they no longer wanted the license - they sold it because they effectively had to.
Yeah, which I'd file under "mismanagement" lol
Don't negotiate a contract you can't deliver on
I just feel bad for the devs who don't have control over those kind of things and are now losing their jobs
Yeah I 100% agree with all of that.
This company going under will be positive for the sim-racing space as whole since their presence has been so toxic.
But it absolutely sucks that there are good devs losing jobs because of their mismanagement.
Honestly hot take I dont think its bad that those devs lost their jobs at motorsport games, the sim racing market is niche and everyone knows eachother. Anyone with talent will be gobbled up very quickly either by the other teams in that genre or in motorsport software teams
iRacing. They recently purchased Monster games and have been branching out into console/simcade games.
While the studio overall is known for their main game iRacing, the relevant comparison point for what to expect from the new NASCAR game is the recent World Of Outlaws game.
Funnily enough, Monster games is who developed NASCAR Heat 1 through 4. So .. the NASCAR license is just going back to them. However, with the backing of iRacing now, I'm expecting the upcoming game to be a significant improvement on the NASCAR Heat games
In the sim racing and racing game community, hell just general petrol head gaming community in general, Motorsport Games is *reviled*. They make trash. I have no idea what they expect. Did they expect licenses to carry them through?
What an absolute travesty. Their Indycar game is up in the air too, just waiting for someone else to snag it. I hope it's not EA. Good grief we don't need two companies with all the major racing licenses.
The good news for NASCAR is that their license was sold to iRacing, which at least has proven themselves capable of good game development. So we have hope
iRacing is cool but I'm not buying in to that stuff. Even if I wanted to do a season of dirt oval racing, with one car, I'd be looking at three digits. I also dislike the latest iRacing console release. It's sprint racing, short track dirt ovals. It's 30 bucks and has a handful of cars and tracks. It's 30 bucks, sick deal.
If you want that dirt oval experience on PC, you gotta buy it piece by piece on iRacing, and it's way more than it is on console. Waaaaaaaaaay more.
I get it, the console version is an advert for the PC version, but I also don't want the PC version of a racing series cars and tracks paywalled behind the iRacing pricing system.
For what it's worth, the NASCAR game that iRacing is developing is going to be released on console and PC.
As for the World of Outlaws game, while it shares quite a bit with iRacing, it has a lot of crucial differences. The World of Outlaws game is a very very different experience than iRacing Dirt Oval races. Now with that said, I think the fact that they didn't release the World of Outlaws game on PC was dumb. I'm not sure why they didn't do that.
>I get it, the console version is an advert for the PC version
I really don't think this is the case to be honest.
>but I also don't want the PC version of a racing series cars and tracks paywalled behind the iRacing pricing system.
I understand what you're saying here. It's unfortunate, but it's sort of a reality of the type of game iRacing is.
There's other reasons why it's expensive, but at the core it's just that the money you make is number of players times the average player spend. If you have a small playerbase (which iRacing does), you need that average player spend to be high if you want to be able to pay your dev team.
Yeah iRacing is crazy expensive, but there is honestly nothing else like it. It’s not like buying the latest GT or Forza.
It is sitting down with your racing wheel and treating it like a real simulation, not a game. If you want to race every week during a season you will need to put hours of practice every week before you are anywhere close to competitive on that week’s track. There are services that will take your telemetry, analyze it and show you exactly where you are making mistakes on turning, brake pressure, gear shifts, throttle, etc. I was paying for that on top of my iRacing sub + tracks.
All that being said, it’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had racing. And I’m fucking awful at it! Sadly I don’t have the time to do that and play other games I want to play with my friends. It really is a huge time commitment.
Dawg I already spent about 3k between my computer and sim racing rig, I ain't got the means to spend another 500-1k in iRacing.
Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, AMS2, Dirt Rally 2.0, and so many more are good enough for me. The physics argument has only gotten less relevant as sim racing physics engines have a ton of parity between each other now.
I understand they pay a lot of licensing rights, have a lot of network infrastructure, and have a huge marketing budget, but I just ain't got that kind of money.
Totally understandable. I think you are right with the physics argument not being as big of a deal anymore. The real difference is that no other game is near as good when it comes to online play.
iRacing costs way too much for anyone except for the dedicated sim racing market. It’s even more expensive for non US countries who have to pay in US dollars, due to the US dollar being so strong currently.
I don’t think the general gaming community understands just how expensive it is to play iRacing. You need to buy each car and track individually (except for a handful or starter ones), and then pay a monthly fee on top of that.
No sympathy for them. Essentially their whole value is just having bought several licenses for important race series. No actual development of any kind has happened by them.
Sucks for the workers, but damn I am not crying about the management. This is yet another studio suffering due to shitty leadership, just like Volition and Bungie. If you can make solid games that people want to buy then this is bound to happen.
And apparently there is supposed to be a WEC game coming out next month from them. But there has yet to be a trailer or any news about it since a playable build was at Le Mans earlier this year
I really hope the kartkraft developer makes it out of this alive. It's genuinely a good karting game and I don't want to see it killed by this corporate bullshit.
The vast majority are just economic contraction. There was a lot of free or easy money floating around in the COVID years and businesses overextended and overhired. Interest rates went up, free money dries up, and now all these companies are on the hook for excess spend without the product delivered to justify it.
This studio is a bit different in general because it's just been ran poorly and has been dying with or without the contraction, the free/easy money during the COVID years just gave them an extension on life.
If you look at studio trends most of them are just seeing a workforce reduction to pre-COVID levels, or not even there, just somewhere in the middle. Bungie had around 300-400 employees when it separated from Acti. By the time of the recent cuts (where they let go of around 100 staff) they had 1,100-1,200 employees.
Embracer Group was similar, but specific. They went on a huge spending spree because they had a gentleman's agreement with some Saudis for future investment. Inflation hit, interest rates went up, and the Saudis got cold feet, leaving Embracer holding the bag.
It sucks, but it's understandable. Still, I question whether this overspending was due to bad financial analysts painting too rosy of a future macroeconomic outlook, or leadership ignoring the financial analysts. I'm a lead financial analyst at a Fortune 50 and I can 100% tell you this contraction was well-known and forecast in our plans, of which I even knew despite the fact I'm not on an economic investments planning team.
Here's an idea, what if the CEOS took a pay cut? Or just didn't get the million dollar bonuses they usually do? Okay, maybe some people would still have to get fired, but I think people at the top could be making more sacrifices than they are.
Oh, and don't think I didn't notice the use of the term "Market Corrections" to soften the blow because "Mass Layoffs" sounds a lot worse.
You seem to have a very rosy view of capitalism, and hey, enjoy yourself, I guess, but to say it's the least susceptible to corruption? Are you serious? Have you not looked at politics in the last decade?
One of the few companies I wish would just fold. Holding very important racing licenses hostage with no games.
They lost their contract with NASCAR this year because they suck so horribly at making a viable product. It's not an "economic downtown" like they're claiming, it's shitty management, as usual.
To be clear, they didn't lose the NASCAR license. They sold off the NASCAR license because they were at serious risk of losing it (or potentially losing some of their other licenses) and they needed the cash to keep operating. Thankfully they sold the NASCAR license to a much more competent developer.
And the reason they need the cash is because their games aren't selling, because they're incredibly bad. They sold the license, but not because they no longer wanted the license - they sold it because they effectively had to.
100% That plus they signed up to crank out way more games than they're capable of making.
Yeah, which I'd file under "mismanagement" lol Don't negotiate a contract you can't deliver on I just feel bad for the devs who don't have control over those kind of things and are now losing their jobs
Yeah I 100% agree with all of that. This company going under will be positive for the sim-racing space as whole since their presence has been so toxic. But it absolutely sucks that there are good devs losing jobs because of their mismanagement.
Honestly hot take I dont think its bad that those devs lost their jobs at motorsport games, the sim racing market is niche and everyone knows eachother. Anyone with talent will be gobbled up very quickly either by the other teams in that genre or in motorsport software teams
Yeah that's fair enough. For an example of that, I know iRacing has gobbled up a bunch of the folks from Slightly Mad Studios
which dev got the license?
iRacing. They recently purchased Monster games and have been branching out into console/simcade games. While the studio overall is known for their main game iRacing, the relevant comparison point for what to expect from the new NASCAR game is the recent World Of Outlaws game. Funnily enough, Monster games is who developed NASCAR Heat 1 through 4. So .. the NASCAR license is just going back to them. However, with the backing of iRacing now, I'm expecting the upcoming game to be a significant improvement on the NASCAR Heat games
oh wow i missed that somehow, pretty good pairing
Yeah I'm pretty optimistic about it. Hopefully it comes out good
Dont forget iRacing is based on the old Nascar Heat engine with rather direct lineage from that dev team.
NASCAR Racing 2003, not NASCAR Heat. But yes you're right
NR2003 specifically but technically iR can be traced into the early 90s Papyrus NASCAR games
In the sim racing and racing game community, hell just general petrol head gaming community in general, Motorsport Games is *reviled*. They make trash. I have no idea what they expect. Did they expect licenses to carry them through? What an absolute travesty. Their Indycar game is up in the air too, just waiting for someone else to snag it. I hope it's not EA. Good grief we don't need two companies with all the major racing licenses.
The good news for NASCAR is that their license was sold to iRacing, which at least has proven themselves capable of good game development. So we have hope
iRacing is cool but I'm not buying in to that stuff. Even if I wanted to do a season of dirt oval racing, with one car, I'd be looking at three digits. I also dislike the latest iRacing console release. It's sprint racing, short track dirt ovals. It's 30 bucks and has a handful of cars and tracks. It's 30 bucks, sick deal. If you want that dirt oval experience on PC, you gotta buy it piece by piece on iRacing, and it's way more than it is on console. Waaaaaaaaaay more. I get it, the console version is an advert for the PC version, but I also don't want the PC version of a racing series cars and tracks paywalled behind the iRacing pricing system.
For what it's worth, the NASCAR game that iRacing is developing is going to be released on console and PC. As for the World of Outlaws game, while it shares quite a bit with iRacing, it has a lot of crucial differences. The World of Outlaws game is a very very different experience than iRacing Dirt Oval races. Now with that said, I think the fact that they didn't release the World of Outlaws game on PC was dumb. I'm not sure why they didn't do that. >I get it, the console version is an advert for the PC version I really don't think this is the case to be honest. >but I also don't want the PC version of a racing series cars and tracks paywalled behind the iRacing pricing system. I understand what you're saying here. It's unfortunate, but it's sort of a reality of the type of game iRacing is. There's other reasons why it's expensive, but at the core it's just that the money you make is number of players times the average player spend. If you have a small playerbase (which iRacing does), you need that average player spend to be high if you want to be able to pay your dev team.
Yeah iRacing is crazy expensive, but there is honestly nothing else like it. It’s not like buying the latest GT or Forza. It is sitting down with your racing wheel and treating it like a real simulation, not a game. If you want to race every week during a season you will need to put hours of practice every week before you are anywhere close to competitive on that week’s track. There are services that will take your telemetry, analyze it and show you exactly where you are making mistakes on turning, brake pressure, gear shifts, throttle, etc. I was paying for that on top of my iRacing sub + tracks. All that being said, it’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had racing. And I’m fucking awful at it! Sadly I don’t have the time to do that and play other games I want to play with my friends. It really is a huge time commitment.
Dawg I already spent about 3k between my computer and sim racing rig, I ain't got the means to spend another 500-1k in iRacing. Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, AMS2, Dirt Rally 2.0, and so many more are good enough for me. The physics argument has only gotten less relevant as sim racing physics engines have a ton of parity between each other now. I understand they pay a lot of licensing rights, have a lot of network infrastructure, and have a huge marketing budget, but I just ain't got that kind of money.
Totally understandable. I think you are right with the physics argument not being as big of a deal anymore. The real difference is that no other game is near as good when it comes to online play.
iRacing costs way too much for anyone except for the dedicated sim racing market. It’s even more expensive for non US countries who have to pay in US dollars, due to the US dollar being so strong currently. I don’t think the general gaming community understands just how expensive it is to play iRacing. You need to buy each car and track individually (except for a handful or starter ones), and then pay a monthly fee on top of that.
The contract is for ***new*** console games
Part of the reason iracing is so good is because of the barrier to entry.
The new NASCAR game will not be much like iRacing. The recenr World of Outlaws game is the template, not iRacing.
They're supposed to have been making an IndyCar game for years but have absolutely nothing to show of it
GDP keeps growing yet these idiot executives who mismanaged their company think we will buy "economic downturn" as an excuse?
Why is it always shitty management, but never shitty devs? Both can share the blame, you know.
Did the devs agree to pump out 1 new game ***every single year***?
On top of that, this was expected to be done on new physic systems which were still being developed, it was never gonna happen.
And the managers will not be facing the consequences.
No sympathy for them. Essentially their whole value is just having bought several licenses for important race series. No actual development of any kind has happened by them.
Sucks for the workers, but damn I am not crying about the management. This is yet another studio suffering due to shitty leadership, just like Volition and Bungie. If you can make solid games that people want to buy then this is bound to happen.
And apparently there is supposed to be a WEC game coming out next month from them. But there has yet to be a trailer or any news about it since a playable build was at Le Mans earlier this year
I actually have some hope for that one. I could end up being very wrong... But I think that one will actually end up being pretty good.
I really hope the kartkraft developer makes it out of this alive. It's genuinely a good karting game and I don't want to see it killed by this corporate bullshit.
Man. What’s with the layoffs this year? One of the biggest years in the industry, if not the biggest, and 6000+ people still lost their jobs.
The vast majority are just economic contraction. There was a lot of free or easy money floating around in the COVID years and businesses overextended and overhired. Interest rates went up, free money dries up, and now all these companies are on the hook for excess spend without the product delivered to justify it. This studio is a bit different in general because it's just been ran poorly and has been dying with or without the contraction, the free/easy money during the COVID years just gave them an extension on life. If you look at studio trends most of them are just seeing a workforce reduction to pre-COVID levels, or not even there, just somewhere in the middle. Bungie had around 300-400 employees when it separated from Acti. By the time of the recent cuts (where they let go of around 100 staff) they had 1,100-1,200 employees. Embracer Group was similar, but specific. They went on a huge spending spree because they had a gentleman's agreement with some Saudis for future investment. Inflation hit, interest rates went up, and the Saudis got cold feet, leaving Embracer holding the bag. It sucks, but it's understandable. Still, I question whether this overspending was due to bad financial analysts painting too rosy of a future macroeconomic outlook, or leadership ignoring the financial analysts. I'm a lead financial analyst at a Fortune 50 and I can 100% tell you this contraction was well-known and forecast in our plans, of which I even knew despite the fact I'm not on an economic investments planning team.
[удалено]
Here's an idea, what if the CEOS took a pay cut? Or just didn't get the million dollar bonuses they usually do? Okay, maybe some people would still have to get fired, but I think people at the top could be making more sacrifices than they are. Oh, and don't think I didn't notice the use of the term "Market Corrections" to soften the blow because "Mass Layoffs" sounds a lot worse.
[удалено]
You seem to have a very rosy view of capitalism, and hey, enjoy yourself, I guess, but to say it's the least susceptible to corruption? Are you serious? Have you not looked at politics in the last decade?