Veteran UK developer Codemasters has suffered a spherical of layoffs following the launch of racing video games F1 23 and EA Sports WRC.
Codemasters proprietor EA confirmed the redundancies in an announcement issued to IGN, though didn’t disclose the variety of workers affected.
“Our enterprise is consistently altering as we attempt to ship wonderful video games and providers that preserve our gamers engaged, related, and impressed,” an EA spokesperson mentioned. “At occasions, this requires the corporate to make small-scale organizational modifications that align our groups and sources to fulfill evolving enterprise wants and priorities. We proceed to work intently with these affected by these modifications, offering applicable help all through this course of.”
EA purchased Codemasters, finest recognized for the racing franchises Grid, F1, and Dirt, in 2021 for $1.2 billion. At the time, EA boss Andrew Wilson mentioned he wished to let the corporate retain its identification with out an excessive amount of outdoors interference. Codemasters CEO Frank Sagnier and CFO Rashid Varachia left quickly after, and Codemasters, together with Project Cars developer Slightly Mad Studios, was made part of EA Sports.
Then, in May final yr, EA merged the event crew at Codemasters Cheshire with Guildford-based Criterion Games to create one giant growth studio to work on Need for Speed Unbound, which struggled to seek out an viewers. Codemasters Birmingham continued to work on the Formula 1 franchise.
This yr, Codemasters launched two racing video games which have struggled to seek out industrial success: F1 23, which got here out in June, and EA Sports WRC, which launched in November. Codemasters holds the official licence of the World Rally Championship, and WRC is the studio’s first rally recreation to have the official WRC licence since 2002’s Colin McRae Rally 3. IGN’s WRC assessment returned a 6/10. We mentioned: “EA Sports WRC looks like an important racing recreation attempting to battle its approach out of an unfinished one.”
The layoffs at Codemasters include EA’s racing recreation franchises floundering. With the Need for Speed sequence a far cry from the glory days of the mid-2000s, the Burnout sequence useless, and Codemasters’ licensed titles failing to maneuver the needle, the way forward for racing video games on the writer is unclear.
The layoffs additionally come at a very tough time for the online game trade, significantly within the UK. Codemasters is only one of quite a lot of UK online game firms which have endured monetary issues in 2023. Frontier Developments, which can also be going by means of a spherical of redundancies, issued a buying and selling replace after Realms of Ruin gross sales flopped. Worms maker Team17 has issued a revenue warning and is making workers redundant. IGN just lately reported on important redundancies set for Sega-owned Creative Assembly after the cancellation of extraction shooter Hyenas. Elsewhere, Fall Guys developer Mediatonic was mentioned to have been “decimated” by layoffs triggered by guardian firm Epic Games, creator of battle royale Fortnite.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can attain Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
