Colin McRae Rally and DiRT – goodbye! Codemasters will not continue developing new racing simulators

British studio Codemasters, known for the Colin McRae Rally and DiRT series, has announced the cessation of development of new rally simulators. This decision is associated with the termination of the partnership with the World Rally Championship (WRC), which the company officially announced.

The studio’s last project in this direction was the EA SPORTS WRC game, released in 2023. In 2024, additional content was released, including the Hard Chargers expansion, which, as Codemasters specified, will be the final one for the franchise. After that, the development of new rally projects is suspended.

The published statement emphasizes that EA SPORTS WRC will remain available to current and new users. At the same time, the company does not report on possible plans to resume work on the racing series in the future.

Codemasters has been creating rally games since the late 1990s. The first Colin McRae Rally game was released in 1998, launching one of the most iconic series in the genre. The studio was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2021. It’s unclear at this time whether recent layoffs at EA – the company announced up to 400 layoffs this week – will affect Codemasters’ future.