Video game developer and publisher that owns the rights to NASCAR, IndyCar, 24 Hours of Le Mans and British Touring Car Championship has lost the rights board of manager in November. This is weeks after the company was warned that it could delisted on Nasdaq stock exchange due to high stock prices and rumors that NASCAR desperately looking for a way out of its license agreement following the dismal launch of NASCAR 21: Ignition. Sports car racing has had a very difficult 2022 and Internal games gave us a glimpse of what was going on behind the scenes.
The story is long and multi-faceted, covering everything from frequent email reports of employees being fired, to hopelessly imposed deadlines with virtually zero chances of fulfillment, to… Requests for additional development personnel are continuously rejected by management. An anonymous team member is quoted as expressing how this culminates in NASCAR 21 error status, unplayable on launch:
“There is a simple denial to overcome problems,” said another person close to the development of the game. “The delay of the game will be known by the dev team, but [CEO] Dmitry [Kozko] will look for a single reason not to procrastinate. As long as there is a non-zero delay possibility, it will not be delayed. Instead, it will wait until the chance of hitting the deadline is completely zero before being announced.”
Dmitry Kozko, CEO of Motorsport Games, says Internal games that the company realized it “had to raise our standards further and put in more checks and balances” after NASCAR 21 It turned out that way. He also reiterated that the IndyCar title 2023 development is going well – albeit just a few screenshots of model viewer style has been public so far — and the BTCC game, announced in 2020 and “pretty much everything that was boxed a while ago” according to an unnamed employee interviewed, is still in production. Regarding the BTCC game, Kozko said:
“If that was the case, we would have announced it already. But that’s not the case, he said. “Therefore, I will not pay much attention to four such sources that generate rumors around us. We are a public company and any material changes will be disclosed to the public immediately, in accordance with the SEC, NASDAQ and other rules and regulations to which we comply. We are moving forward with all the resources we have. We are here to make great racing games.”
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To visit Internal games for the whole story. Sports car racing game has a NoInfluence in sim racing, have won the aforementioned licenses and acquired a lot of talent and technology over the past few years. If it is going to overcome its current challenges and survive beyond 2023, it will need to make some of those investments.
