Entertainment
Slightly Mad founder is very mad at EA for killing Project CARS-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro
As uncertainty surrounds Slightly Mad Studio’s future, its founder is already asking staff to join his new studio to revive GTR.
Project CARS 2 – Slightly Mad Studio’s founder has never hidden his disdain for EA as a company (pic: Bandai Namco)
As uncertainty surrounds Slightly Mad Studio’s future, its founder is already asking staff to join his new studio to revive GTR.
It was never formally announced to begin with, but any chance of there being a Project CARS 4 is effectively dead following a recent announcement by EA that they are discontinuing the whole franchise.
Series developer Slightly Mad Studios was working on a new racing sim, but the future of that project and the studio itself are now up in the air. Given EA’s comments, the studio is likely to be either repurposed or, worse case scenario, shut down.
Although nothing’s been confirmed yet, the studio’s founder, Ian Bell, has criticised EA’s decision and is already looking to hire staff from Slightly Mad Studios for his own new team.
Bell founded Slightly Mad Studios in 2009, fashioning it out of the remains of his last studio, Blimey! Games. He would eventually leave in 2021, a year after the release of Project CARS 3.
‘EA, keeping on being awesome… I said my bit and I stand by every word as they continue to prove them,’ he wrote on social media.
‘How are those numbers (sorry I mean people, with hopes, dreams and families) looking at the bottom of those spreadsheets?’
Bell is no doubt referring to disparaging comments he made about the company back in 2017. Before Slightly Mad Studios was acquired by EA, the two had worked together before on 2009’s Need For Speed: Shift and its sequel.
Bell accused EA of trying to destroy his studio by cancelling development of a third game, claiming that EA offered $1.5 million (presumably, Bell didn’t specify currency) for Slightly Mad Studios to work on a new game on the condition it didn’t take on any other projects with another publisher.
Bell agreed, only for EA to cancel the project two weeks before development began, leaving Slightly Mad Studios in financial peril.
‘We were in trouble, we had nothing left. We were done. They literally destroyed our company. They tried to kill us,’ he said.
‘They tried to f*** us over, there is no other way to put it. That’s what they tried to do. They tried to destroy is. And we have no love for EA and this company.’
He went so far as to call EA ‘horrible human beings’ and ‘corporate monsters,’ singling out Patrick Söderlund in particular, who was executive vice president of EA’s worldwide studios at the time.
Currently, Bell has plans to open a new studio called Mildly Annoyed Games and make a follow up to Blimey! Games’ GTR 2 – FIA GT Racing Game (yes, that is its full title) from 2006.
He promises zero input from publishers, a team comprised of the original staff, and is even looking to hire people from Slightly Mad Studios.
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‘So that’s about 18 hours and counting calling all of the old Project CARS 2 team. Many of the GTR 2 guys are already with us and most of the Project CARS 2 superstars want to join,’ he says.
‘GTR Revolution is going full hardcore in every possible way we can think of. It’s already building. Input welcomed.’
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