EA to buy racing game developer Codemasters for $1.2 billion

[JZStudios]

On 12/14/2020 at 10:51 AM, handymanshandle said:

Wasn't a lot of Ghost's staff former Criteron staff after the Burnout days anyways?

 

Although, I'm not sad about Codemasters ending up in EA's court anyways. People have been bitching about them falling for the past decade, at least this might give them a reason to bitch about them now.

I don't know. I still don't understand why Burnout died. People say Criterion's NFS:HP was one of the best, but to me it felt like a soulless Paradise.

 

I definitely saw the writing on the wall for a while, and a lot of prominent people from the DiRT side have left just over the past few years.

 

On 12/14/2020 at 11:06 AM, RejZoR said:

Burnout Paradise was so boring

You take that back.

 

On 12/14/2020 at 1:39 PM, Delicieuxz said:

Too casual and focusing on the wrong things, for me. And the great environmental design disappeared after D1 and CM never got it back.

I've played D1 on PS3, couldn't get it working right on PC, and I 100% disagree. Controller or wheel, D1 was awkward, visually basic, hugely filtered (Though so was 2) and the environments were dead. It had some more vehicle classes like Kamaz trucks, but everything else about the game was vastly improved in D2 and D3.

I'm sick of the "Oooughh, but Ken Block tho..." Turn it off. the racing, content, environments, track designs, physics, controls, etc. were all way better in 2 and 3.

On 12/14/2020 at 1:39 PM, Delicieuxz said:

I don't think that EA has had their Microsoft / Phil Spencer moment where they realize that being shit actually harms their business and that it's worth not being shit and is even a very good business idea to not be shit.

 

CM has been dying for a long time. I don't think they even get big enough budgets to make a decent game with anymore. Like you said, DiRT Rally was a low-budget title - and most of everything CM have done since then seems to not amount to what a full and polished product should be.

 

I'm guessing that CM has been starved of budgets since ages ago, and that it's because most of their releases haven't been performing very well for years now that the company is being sold.

I just realized on the Dirt forums that EA pushes all of their studios to use DICE's terrible Frostbite engine which is absolute ass for vehicle dynamics. And I highly doubt EA will let them keep using theirs or make a new one.

 

23 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

I like how everyone's implying EA would kill Codemasters. 

 

Codemasters has been dying for a while already. The GRID reboot was mediocre and DiRT 5's direction has been rather controversial, and yearly F1 releases doesn't help. DiRT Rally's their only saving grace. 

 

If anything, EA would only put them out of their misery. 

It's one thing to die on your own, it's another to be making a new racing game and have EA just say "Nah, fuck it. You guys are a skeleton crew now." like they did with Criterion. EA might give them one shot to make $7 billion and shutter them.

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, JZStudios said:

I don't know. I still don't understand why Burnout died. People say Criterion's NFS:HP was one of the best, but to me it felt like a soulless Paradise.

 

I definitely saw the writing on the wall for a while, and a lot of prominent people from the DiRT side have left just over the past few years.

Criterion was always at odds with EA. I honestly bet some of it had to do with Criterion vastly preferring to roll their own tech (RenderWare and Chameleon) versus using EA's internal engines (EAGL, Frostbite, etc.) but the two have always kinda been estranged. Although, I do miss the Burnout series. I still genuinely think that Burnout 3 needs a re-release really badly.

[D13H4RD]

1 hour ago, handymanshandle said:

I still genuinely think that Burnout 3 needs a re-release really badly.

Considering the HP2010 re-release, I'm not sure how well that'd go...

[RejZoR]

@JZStudios

Sorry, but it just was. It had big open world with nothing to do in it. Except races in intersections. Driving model of cars was terrible and crashing them wasn't even satisfying like in Burnout 3. The most fun part was chasing checkpoints with a motorbike. And even that got old really quickly. It's why I like (or should I say liked, before EA fucked it up) cops in open worlds. There was always this all present unknown in form of cops that just made something to do in otherwise empty maps. And it was fun and exciting.

[VixAAT]

On 12/14/2020 at 10:53 AM, Jet_ski said:

Summary

Electronic Arts reached an agreement on Monday to buy U.K. racing game developer Codemasters in a deal worth $1.2 billion. The deal upstaged a previous transaction agreed between rival publisher Take-Two Interactiveand Codemasters. The firm had agreed to acquire Codemasters for £726 million ($971 million) only last month.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

It’s ok guys, everyone from Codemasters will quit their EA job after a while and we will buy games from their future employers. I’m sure the MBAs at EA will innovate newer ways to ruin Codemasters’ games!

 

Sources

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/12/14/ea-to-buy-racing-game-developer-codemasters-for-1point2-billion.html

Want to use DRS:

Pay £13.00

[VixAAT]

On 12/14/2020 at 11:48 AM, Delicieuxz said:

I wonder how CM could be worth $1.2 billion. Outside of the F1 series (which I haven't paid attention to) their games have all flopped on PC since 2017's DiRT 4. DiRT 4, DiRT Rally 2, GRID (remake), DiRT 5 all initially, and for a long time after their releases, bombed in performance and reviews on Steam - though, DR2 started getting sales and positive reviews on Steam after it went on repeated heavy discounts (80% or so off from a variety of sources and on Steam itself).

 

Maybe the games did a lot better on consoles.

I think a lot of people haven't realised that F1 2020 was a huge step up for the game adding the feature for players to create their own team. They also made AI more susceptible to crashing and adding retirements of drivers. yes, the livery editor was basic but compared to other racing games, which have much bigger studios behind them it is quite good for comparatively low budget developer. EA I think are just going to ruin the games, and interfere with them. I think Take-Two's approach was invest in them, and leave them while EA's is more go in and change everything

[Delicieuxz]

6 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I've played D1 on PS3, couldn't get it working right on PC, and I 100% disagree. Controller or wheel, D1 was awkward, visually basic, hugely filtered (Though so was 2) and the environments were dead. It had some more vehicle classes like Kamaz trucks, but everything else about the game was vastly improved in D2 and D3.

I'm sick of the "Oooughh, but Ken Block tho..." Turn it off. the racing, content, environments, track designs, physics, controls, etc. were all way better in 2 and 3.

D1 has the most varied, detailed, and natural-looking environments CM has ever made. The graphics are of that era (and even back then I would disable the bloom with a mod), but the attention to detail and the variety in the environment of many of its tracks is unsurpassed in anything CM has done since.

 

Most of the videos online are ancient, and even those that aren't are very blurry or don't have the bloom disabled, or recorded at a shit quality as if they were recorded a decade ago (HTF is this recorded this year? And apparently the loading times on the console version were terrible). So, it's hard to find good examples of D1.

(that person is obviously playing on a keyboard)

 

In D1, it looks like there is a wide variety of environment assets and that everything is intelligently placed manually to create a natural feel. In D2-onward, CM's environments feel like they have a few brushes and they just cover the environment with one of those brushes, creating bland-feeling, nondescript environments. WRC 7, 8, and 9 have a more personalized feel in their environments, which reminds me of D1 and Richard Burns Rally in approach.

 

In D1, almost every event has a unique personality to it. For example, there isn't just a 'forest environment', but each forest-centric event has its own palette and style and rhythm to the environment. But in subsequent games, CM have a limited number of basic environments and they have lots of tracks using each one, and it's a huge downgrade from D1's design.

 

 

The steering-wheel support in D1 is, indeed, awful without a mod to improve it. But the sim-cade controller handling is just fine and, while initially feeling a bit floaty, I find it a lot of fun, nimble, and much better than D2's and D3's - and from a rally point-of-view, it definitely is. D2's and D3's are too simplified and arcady for me, and are not designed around a rally-racing feel and can't be used in a rally style because it simply doesn't respond in that way.

 

Maybe DiRT 1 didn't have a good presentation on console (I played and still play it on PC). D2 has far more simplistic environmental design than D1, much 'worse', IMO, (simpler, arcady, not rally-ish) car handling, not really any tracks that address an interest in rally, and overall short, more generic-looking tracks that are all about arcade racing.

 

D3 is a very casualized game that uses rally as it's backdrop, but presents rally in an entirely arcade style. The controls in D3 are very simplified and casual, and they simply don't afford for handling that resembles rally-racing. The tracks are mostly shorter and wide-open, with very few environmental templates that just keep being used, and the variance of detail within those environments being very limited, resulting in a lot of of generic-looking tracks.

 

In track-length, track-design, focus on rally event, rally-style controller handling, seriousness of presentation, no hands-holding, and overall package refinement, D1 is the last full and serious product CM made, IMO. It was made to be a full and complete game, whereas everything CM has made since has major concessions, typically in content and track-design: DR2 has short tracks, simplified handling, less attentive track design, DR3 uses a very limited number of track templates to produce tons of generic tracks, DR1 has basic environment detail, lacks track-content and a proper menu, DR4 over-uses generic auto-generated tracks, DR2 has plain-looking tracks and no campaign, etc.

 

6 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I just realized on the Dirt forums that EA pushes all of their studios to use DICE's terrible Frostbite engine which is absolute ass for vehicle dynamics. And I highly doubt EA will let them keep using theirs or make a new one.

Yeah, that's been EA's thing for ages, even while the difficulties and inapplicability of using Frostbite was complained about. However, Unreal Engine 4 was used for Jedi: Fallen Order. So, perhaps EA management is coming around to accepting the limitations of Frostbite.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, TheAverageGamer said:

I think a lot of people haven't realised that F1 2020 was a huge step up for the game adding the feature for players to create their own team. They also made AI more susceptible to crashing and adding retirements of drivers. yes, the livery editor was basic but compared to other racing games, which have much bigger studios behind them it is quite good for comparatively low budget developer. EA I think are just going to ruin the games, and interfere with them. I think Take-Two's approach was invest in them, and leave them while EA's is more go in and change everything

EA - Change everything

 

New slogan I guess XD

[Delicieuxz]

2 hours ago, TheAverageGamer said:

I think a lot of people haven't realised that F1 2020 was a huge step up for the game adding the feature for players to create their own team. They also made AI more susceptible to crashing and adding retirements of drivers. yes, the livery editor was basic but compared to other racing games, which have much bigger studios behind them it is quite good for comparatively low budget developer. EA I think are just going to ruin the games, and interfere with them. I think Take-Two's approach was invest in them, and leave them while EA's is more go in and change everything

I haven't played F1 2020 and my interest in CM is mainly for their rally games. Based on that, I'm of the general opinion that there isn't too much to ruin about CM games. Regardless of which publisher buys them, I think they might get bigger budgets to make games with than whatever they had before.

[PlayStation 2]

8 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

Considering the HP2010 re-release, I'm not sure how well that'd go...

Meh, I'd honestly pay $20 just for a native port of Burnout 3 to PC with controller support and not much else. 

Hot Pursuit 2010's re-release was shameful though. EA had no business calling it a remaster when it almost literally looks the same as the old game.

[JZStudios]

10 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

Considering the HP2010 re-release, I'm not sure how well that'd go...

If it came out on PC with higher resolution it'd be better than the "remaster." A re-release is just that, on a new format. Like going from vinyl to CD to digital. No remastering done necessarily.

 

10 hours ago, RejZoR said:

@JZStudios

Sorry, but it just was. It had big open world with nothing to do in it. Except races in intersections. Driving model of cars was terrible and crashing them wasn't even satisfying like in Burnout 3. The most fun part was chasing checkpoints with a motorbike. And even that got old really quickly. It's why I like (or should I say liked, before EA fucked it up) cops in open worlds. There was always this all present unknown in form of cops that just made something to do in otherwise empty maps. And it was fun and exciting.

Well god forbid a racing game has driving and racing in it. I've heard this argument about a lot of racing games, and honestly... duh. I don't know what people expect. Play GTA if you don't want driving.

The driving model and the map were perfectly in sync. You're flat wrong about that. You can't praise Burnout 3 or Revenge and then say the same driving model in BP is terrible. The worst thing about Paradise was the open road rage instead of set circuits. Potentially it allowed for more freedom, but realistically it just made things really random.

The crashing was far more detailed, realistic, and stylized than B3. Again, I don't know how you could make that argument. B3 crashed the same every time.

 

Cops are really hard to do right. I absolutely despise the cops in Driver SF. Once you beat the game most of them spawn in Corvettes you can't outrun or Tahoes? that drive head on into you at full speed. They genuinely make the game worse, but luckily as long as you don't hit them they don't aggro. The driving model is fantastic though and I start it up every now and then to drift around for a few hours.

Then there's the games like Cyberpunk now where you lose them in 15 seconds, or GTAV where they literally know your exact location at all times and spawn in front of you. Cops are often worse inclusions than exclusions and most people avoid them in games because they suck.

6 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

D1 has the most varied, detailed, and natural-looking environments CM has ever made. The graphics are of that era (and even back then I would disable the bloom with a mod), but the attention to detail and the variety in the environment of many of its tracks is unsurpassed in anything CM has done since.

I very strongly disagree. Nothing about that looks more detailed or natural than D2 or D3. Definitely not Dirt Rally.

Here's some more recent footage;

Keep in mind D2 and D3 were also "of the era" and look way better with much less bland scenery. I suggest you replay them. Or maybe play them at all. I don't know.

Here's a random comparison video I stumbled across. Dirt 1 looks far more nondescript than any of it's sequels. Playing it on PS3 (I'm not seeing much difference on PC) I was pretty disappointed by the super bland and empty environments. Some of the rally stages like Japan you posted are okay, but most are very empty and very boring.

 

6 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

In track-length, track-design, focus on rally event, rally-style controller handling, seriousness of presentation, no hands-holding, and overall package refinement, D1 is the last full and serious product CM made, IMO. It was made to be a full and complete game, whereas everything CM has made since has major concessions, typically in content and track-design: DR2 has short tracks, simplified handling, less attentive track design, DR3 uses a very limited number of track templates to produce tons of generic tracks, DR1 has basic environment detail, lacks track-content and a proper menu, DR4 over-uses generic auto-generated tracks, DR2 has plain-looking tracks and no campaign, etc.

I'm also going to disagree on the handling front. "Just fine" isn't great, and you admit wheel support is bad. D2 and D3 are great with a wheel and play great with a controller. It is more of an arcade... wider stages kind of thing, but D1 in no way was accurate or realistic and I'd still toss that point to D2 and D3. Your idea of "rallyness" or whatever is very odd. Considering how D3 handles gymkhana, which is the same handling throughout the game, you're also wrong. It's more of the wide tracks that give that impression.

The tracks aren't that much longer than D2 or 3, there's a focus on far more than Rally (maybe that's your problem), I have no idea what "rally style controller handling" is because it was terrible on D1, and claiming it's the last serious product they made makes me 100% sure you didn't try DiRT Rally 1 or 2. Which legitimately has all of that and skips all the other stuff you don't mention.

DR2 100% has a campaign. 120% you didn't play them.

If DR2 has "plain looking tracks" which are lauded by the actual people that race them, then I have no idea what to tell you or what you're possibly talking about.

 

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

EA - Change everything

 

New slogan I guess XD

It took me a while to remember it was "Challenge everything" and not change everything.

 

2 hours ago, handymanshandle said:

Meh, I'd honestly pay $20 just for a native port of Burnout 3 to PC with controller support and not much else. 

Hot Pursuit 2010's re-release was shameful though. EA had no business calling it a remaster when it almost literally looks the same as the old game.

The Burnout Paradise remaster had updated road textures, some billboards changed, more smoke, and I think AO and a different AA. And all the DLC. It was a $5 upgrade for people who owned the original, which never got a large portion of the DLC.

[Delicieuxz]

4 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I very strongly disagree. Nothing about that looks more detailed or natural than D2 or D3. Definitely not Dirt Rally.

Here's some more recent footage;

The desert tracks are bland-looking. The rally-cross tracks are also pretty plain looking. But the rest aren't.

 

The environmental design in D2 and D3 is more plain, conceptually. I think you're talking "detail" to mean polygon-count or high-res textures, whereas I'm referring to actual variety of assets and the environmental layout and track phases, the sense of layers of detail in the scenes. I'm talking about the artistic design, which makes a track have a natural feel. Look at how much variety and conceptual layers of detail there is in just the grass in the thumbnail of the 2nd video there (at 28:20 in the video to see it in action).

 

And then look at DiRT Rally's grass:

 

Quote

Keep in mind D2 and D3 were also "of the era" and look way better with much less bland scenery. I suggest you replay them. Or maybe play them at all. I don't know.

That sounds stand-offish. But I have played DiRT 1, 2, and 3 a lot and have all of them installed right now. I know what I'm talking about.

 

Quote

Here's a random comparison video I stumbled across. Dirt 1 looks far more nondescript than any of it's sequels. Playing it on PS3 (I'm not seeing much difference on PC) I was pretty disappointed by the super bland and empty environments. Some of the rally stages like Japan you posted are okay, but most are very empty and very boring.

Most of the rally stages in the game (and most of the games races are rally, unlike D2's) are well detailed like the Japan stage I posted. And those stages have much more natural-looking environments than D2 and D3.

 

Quote

I'm also going to disagree on the handling front. "Just fine" isn't great, and you admit wheel support is bad. D2 and D3 are great with a wheel and play great with a controller. It is more of an arcade... wider stages kind of thing, but D1 in no way was accurate or realistic and I'd still toss that point to D2 and D3. Your idea of "rallyness" or whatever is very odd. Considering how D3 handles gymkhana, which is the same handling throughout the game, you're also wrong. It's more of the wide tracks that give that impression.

I did say that D1 has awful wheel support... without a mod. But I also said that it has good controller support, and much better handling design than D2 and D3. As I said, D2 and D3 don't have anything resembling rally handling. The cars can't be driven in a rally way - the cornering, the braking, and the ground physics simply aren't designed for it. Instead, those things in D2 and D3 are designed for an arcade experience, just with a rally backdrop.

 

My idea of rallyness (and "rallyness" isn't actually a quote of mine) is having handling in which a car can be driven in a style they would be in actual rally racing. The braking and cornering in D2 and D3 do not afford that. In D2, it's literally impossible to do a controlled slide around a corner in a way that resembles anything like rally driving. The same goes for D3. I don't know how you could have played the games and not noticed that.

 

I guess you're just more into arcade racers and aren't necessarily looking for rally-racing in CM's rally-branded games.

 

Quote

The tracks aren't that much longer than D2 or 3, there's a focus on far more than Rally (maybe that's your problem), I have no idea what "rally style controller handling" is because it was terrible on D1, and claiming it's the last serious product they made makes me 100% sure you didn't try DiRT Rally 1 or 2. Which legitimately has all of that and skips all the other stuff you don't mention.

DR2 100% has a campaign. 120% you didn't play them.

If DR2 has "plain looking tracks" which are lauded by the actual people that race them, then I have no idea what to tell you or what you're possibly talking about.

I own every CM game, including D1 and D2, released on PC except for DiRT 5.

 

If you're going to attack a position, you should attack the actual position, and not a reframing of it. I said: "D1 is the last full and serious product CM made, IMO".

 

DR1 and DR2 are not *full* and serious products. DR1 sorely lacks content, it lacks a proper campaign, it lacks a complete-feeling menu and what it has is merely serviceable. DR2 lacks a proper campaign (and I meant to write "proper campaign" and not just "campaign"), it lacks attention to detail in the environmental design, it is basically a bunch of disparate races dependent upon connection to unreliable and slow online servers. Neither are full packages.

 

DR2's environments are plain-looking. Just compare them to WRC 8 and 9's to verify that fact for yourself. The newer WRCs feature much more aesthetic design of the environment - again, I'm not talking about graphical fidelity. DR2's, DR1's are visually very monotone by comparison.

 

Despite high-res textures and plenty of polygonal detail, the CM take on the same location is bland and monotone, and there's an absence of contrast in the colours: There's the yellow-green ground, and the slightly more greenish yellow-green trees. And the CM track, as is the CM trend, doesn't go through nearly as many visual phases in the near-location design. CM's environment design is so uninspired that in DR2 they redid the same locations as DR1 and made them look the same way, with some additional touches on them. Wales, Finland, the DR2 versions are just the DR1 style slightly-updated.

 

In CM tracks (outside of DR1), typically, every part of it looks and feels the same as any other part of it - there's a lack of visual variance and feeling of feeling of progression within the stages. And then, in D2 and D3, CM use the same environment over and over. In D1, outside of a select examples, each event has its own setting.

 

 

 

WRC 9 vs DiRT Rally 2:

 

 

In every scene, the CM version of the tracks is aesthetically impoverished and bland. And the touch that WRC has, the touch that's missing in CM games since forever, I think is a sense that's present in Richard Burns Rally and DiRT 1's rally environments.

 

I would say that CM location designs are aesthetically uneventful and monotonous. And I guess, like you do with my mine, I completely disagree with your position.

[RejZoR]

Driving only is boring. You play it once and it's the same every time. It's why I just can't stand dumb circuit racing games. Racing games with cops mixed in, even if only as a side thing, best shit ever. Not 2 races are ever the same and you can't just hold the exact same line every time. Racing games with track editors are also nice but as rare as hyperdiamonds.

[JZStudios]

22 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

I did say that D1 has awful wheel support... without a mod. But I also said that it has good controller support, and much better handling design than D2 and D3. As I said, D2 and D3 don't have anything resembling rally handling. The cars can't be driven in a rally way - the cornering, the braking, and the ground physics simply aren't designed for it. Instead, those things in D2 and D3 are designed for an arcade experience, just with a rally backdrop.

 

My idea of rallyness (and "rallyness" isn't actually a quote of mine) is having handling in which a car can be driven in a style they would be in actual rally racing. The braking and cornering in D2 and D3 do not afford that. In D2, it's literally impossible to do a controlled slide around a corner in a way that resembles anything like rally driving. The same goes for D3. I don't know how you could have played the games and not noticed that.

 

Again, I disagree. I played D1 with a controller and it was awful. As was RBR. You also can't drive it in a realistic "rally way." You can in DR and DR2, that's why rally and RX drivers like to practice with it.

I don't know what advanced rally driving techniques you're applying in D1 that you can't do in the rest. Scandinavian flicks work, handbrake turns work, you can 100% hold a slide around a corner in D2.

22 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

DR1 and DR2 are not *full* and serious products. DR1 sorely lacks content, it lacks a proper campaign, it lacks a complete-feeling menu and what it has is merely serviceable. DR2 lacks a proper campaign (and I meant to write "proper campaign" and not just "campaign"), it lacks attention to detail in the environmental design, it is basically a bunch of disparate races dependent upon connection to unreliable and slow online servers. Neither are full packages.

DR2 has equal to the same campaign in all the previous games though. You start with a Fulvia and upgrade it, buy new cars, and move up the ranks. What's missing?

22 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

DR2's environments are plain-looking. Just compare them to WRC 8 and 9's to verify that fact for yourself. The newer WRCs feature much more aesthetic design of the environment - again, I'm not talking about graphical fidelity. DR2's, DR1's are visually very monotone by comparison.

 

Despite high-res textures and plenty of polygonal detail, the CM take on the same location is bland and monotone, and there's an absence of contrast in the colours: There's the yellow-green ground, and the slightly more greenish yellow-green trees. And the CM track, as is the CM trend, doesn't go through nearly as many visual phases in the near-location design. CM's environment design is so uninspired that in DR2 they redid the same locations as DR1 and made them look the same way, with some additional touches on them. Wales, Finland, the DR2 versions are just the DR1 style slightly-updated.

 

In CM tracks (outside of DR1), typically, every part of it looks and feels the same as any other part of it - there's a lack of visual variance and feeling of feeling of progression within the stages. And then, in D2 and D3, CM use the same environment over and over. In D1, outside of a select examples, each event has its own setting.

 

So you're arguing about color variety? That's a completely different topic. I think there's a few issues with CM in that regard then.

1. Their engine is old as hell and the lighting sucks. DR had little bushes that looked like black holes. In D4 they went to a PBR pipeline so the materials look a bit better, but the lighting is still pretty garbage. And they still filter. That kills a lot of color.

2. They've stated they can't actually do real locations of public roads because they don't have the WRC license, which actually makes it harder to match scene variety.

But in terms of track layout, environmental detail, covalence, is all pretty similar. I mean rocks jutting out, the carved cliff sides, the hills, the distance, roadside objects, etc. all look well put together and well blended in both titles. There's not just a harsh cut with random jutting rocks and cliff sides like D1 had. Actually for New Zealand I think the carved out hills look more realistic and natural on DR.

I guess WRC has some more colors, but the actual track details aren't quite as good.

[Falkentyne]

Need For Speed died after Porsche Unleashed.  NFS3: hot pursuit (original--pure arcade) and NFS5 (Porsche Unleashed--more like an "arcade sim" rather than arcade) were the two best NFS games ever made.

[Kavamale21]

Somehow I expecting end of codemasters as EA end most of studios it owns bought studio to get franchise rights and close it after few years keeping intellectual rights. 

[flashiling]

F1 games get ready to buy driver booster packs, and oh look lando got voted driver of the day in australia, let's make the black background lando norris card with +5 on some stats, but also make it rare so you can't realisticly just grind and get it since it's locked behind a paywall, along with this cool fortnite dance podium celebration only available in online mode.

(puked in my mouth while i typed that)

[kaixax555]

It's funny how it comes full circle for Slightly Mad Studios. They developed the Shift series under EA's Need for Speed banner, went out on their own to publish Project Cars series, get bought over by Codemasters and now Codemasters is about to be bought by EA.

[unsorted]

Big Publisher acquiring any racing dev makes me nervous.  Bugbear bought by Big Publisher too, some time ago: https://thqnordic.com/article/thq-nordic-acquires-wreckfest-developer-bugbear-entertainment

 

 

[Bombastinator]

8 hours ago, unsorted said:

Big Publisher acquiring any racing dev makes me nervous.  Bugbear bought by Big Publisher too, some time ago: https://thqnordic.com/article/thq-nordic-acquires-wreckfest-developer-bugbear-entertainment

 

 

Big publishers generally buy out small ones that have a viable product.  It’s not specific to racing games or even application development.

[unsorted]

8 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Big publishers generally buy out small ones that have a viable product.  It’s not specific to racing games or even application development.

Of course,.but I have a particular aversion to great developers of racing games being bought out.  Bugbear were/are one of my favourites.

[IAmAndre]

The deal is now official. It's just been announced on the Codemasters Facebook page. Im looking forward to have the DIRT series on EA Access, which could potentially justify a subscription.

[xAcid9]

34 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

The deal is now official. It's just been announced on the Codemasters Facebook page. Im looking forward to have the DIRT series on EA Access, which could potentially justify a subscription.

Finally I can try the infamous Dirt 4 w/o buying or pirating it. 

[Delicieuxz]

13 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Finally I can try the infamous Dirt 4 w/o buying or pirating it. 

 

If DiRT4 is the only EA Play game you'd be interested in, you can buy it for cheaper than the regular price of a month of EA Play.

 

https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/dirt-4/

 

Even cheaper: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/dirt-4