The worrying announcement for rallying’s future

Measuring the health of a world championship sport goes beyond simply counting the competitors in the field.

There are three (or, as is often said colloquially, two and a half) manufacturers in the World Rally Championship and eight fully professional, salaried drivers. We all know this and we can all see it’s not where we want rallying to be.

But look beyond that and there are more reasons to be concerned. We need a reset and from a technical standpoint, the ongoing WRC27 regulations saga seeks to remedy this. But then there’s the promotional aspect. This, as several drivers have highlighted, is where the alarm bells are ringing loudest.

Yesterday EA Sports – through the Codemasters studio it procured in 2021 for $1.2 billion – announced it would no longer produce the officially-licensed WRC video game. At first glance, this would likely generate a collective shrug from non-gamers, especially as the championship’s messaging at the announcement talked of an “ambitious new direction”.

I’m struggling to feel excited. For what lay in Codemasters’ announcement was a gut-punch.

“For now, we are pausing development plans on future rally titles,” it read.

Remember, the current EA Sports WRC product is from the same lineage that began in 1998 with Colin McRae Rally. Bringing our discipline’s biggest star power to the world of video games created a generation of passionate fans – this writer included. We at DirtFish understood its power too, partnering with the franchise in its DiRT 4 and DiRT Rally 2.0 editions to bring our Rally School in Snoqualmie to the world digitally.

There will be practical reasons behind this decision. EA made a round of job cuts at Codemasters in late 2023 and another 300 roles across the EA portfolio were culled the day before the EA Sports WRC announcement (though whether any of these were specifically at Codemasters is not clear).

“As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we’ve made select changes within our organization that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth,” an EA spokesperson said in an official statement.

A select change to its long-term strategic priorities, it also appears, is jettisoning rallying from its portfolio. Codemasters is now solely focused on its Formula 1 game, for which it has the official license from Formula One Management – staff who were once fully focused on the studio’s off-road titles had already begun shifting their time towards its F1 property and other EA titles after EA Sports WRC’s release.

Combining the official WRC license with rallying’s most prominent video game franchise was supposed to be the silver bullet. Codemasters, it is fair to opine, is at the forefront of racing game development.

Migrating from Kylotonn, which had developed WRC 5-10 and signed off with WRC Generations, to Codemasters was meant to be a step up for rallying. On paper it was akin to putting the best car in the field and fastest driver of a generation into one team. This was rallying’s opportunity to capture the hearts and minds of another generation of gamers in the way the original McRae franchise did.

Instead, a key mechanism through which rallying can establish wider cultural relevance – and thus make itself more valuable to manufacturers, to partners, to events – is gone. Yes, the WRC license looks set to end up with another studio – but the world’s biggest sports video game developer has decided we’re no longer worth investing in.

While we were all busy debating what the future technical regulations of WRC vehicles would be, we got blindsided. This one hurts. From a marketing perspective it will have consequences; having your video game title in the same roster as F1, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, the PGA Tour and the world’s biggest soccer game was a feather in rallying’s cap. It added weight to the argument that we’re a major, elite international sport.

Right now the WRC has a responsibility to all of us that whichever studio gets the license next, it’s to one that can do our sport justice, not the highest bidder. It speaks volumes that the officially-licensed games were always the poor cousin of whatever Codemasters was producing with its own franchise before the two joined forces. But that doesn’t mean chasing realism at all costs either, rather something that reflects well on our discipline to a general audience.

Colin McRae Rally and subsequently DiRT’s power was in providing a fun, enjoyable experience of off-road motorsport to an audience far wider than those who might tune into live WRC coverage or watch the highlights afterwards. It was a vital avenue to engender awareness of our discipline – something that’s currently one of our biggest headaches to solve.

You have to take a step back to take two forward, it’s often said. We have to be hopeful that’s what this is. Because, make no mistake, this is a step back.