Codemasters Suffers Layoffs Ahead Of Christmas

Codemasters Employees Laid Off Christmas 2023 F1 23 Las Vegas Carlos Sainz Ferrari 576p.png
With the releases of F1 23 and EA Sports WRC complete, employees of developer Codemasters are laid off ahead of Christmas. What this means for both titles is not clear yet.

Image credit: EA Sports / Codemasters

Racing game developers do not have an easy time in late 2023, it seems. After Motorsport Games laid off 40% of its staff, Kunos Simulazioni’s parent company Digital Bros. reduced its workforce by 30%. However, the latter did not affect Kunos themselves, as per information available to OverTake. Still, it might have led to a bit of a scare for some.

Now, Codemasters also sees employees no longer being with the studio, which Electronic Arts has taken over in early 2021. EA has confirmed this on inquiry of OverTake, giving the following statement:

"Our business is constantly changing as we strive to deliver amazing games and services that keep our players engaged, connected, and inspired. At times, this requires the company to make small-scale organizational changes that align our teams and resources to meet evolving business needs and priorities. We continue to work closely with those affected by these changes, providing appropriate support throughout this process."

Some comments in the community suggest that this could be business as usual after the release of titles. However, Codemasters employees being laid off right before Christmas has to be difficult for those affected either way. The number of employees that are being let go has not been disclosed.

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Codemasters Employees Laid Off: Effect On F1 & WRC Unknown​

Codemasters' 2023 projects included F1 23, which launched in June and has accompanied the real F1 season since. After considerable speculation about when the announcement may come, EA Sports WRC was finally revealed in early September. The first official WRC title under the EA banner released two months later.

Both titles faced their share of issues upon release, leading to mixed receptions in the community. For EA Sports WRC in particular, developers are working to resolve these issues. In fact, the next update is expected to be deployed on December 14, although no info on what it includes is available yet.

Meanwhile, the list of F1 23 problems has shrunk considerably in recent months. With Codemasters employees laid off, could the pace of these fixes slow down? The upcoming months will tell.

What are your thoughts on Codemasters employees being laid off at this point in time? Let us know on Twitter @OverTake_gg or in the comments below!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

At times, this requires the company to make small-scale organizational changes that align our teams and resources to meet evolving business needs and priorities.

Translation:

We want to maximize our profits even more so that our shareholders can enjoy a nice dividend.
 
Nothing wrong with maximizing profits...if the service or product provided is of quality... and thats where it all falls apart ...

Electronic Arts announced $5.753B profit In the last 12 months.
Nice Profit!

EA didn´t get a single penny out of my pocket the last five years and that´s what everybody should do. The players who are buying the EA titles are also responsible for the downfall of the gaming market, loss of independent studios, therefore less competition in the market, fewer variety in games, etc. If the gaming world continues this way, we´ll only have a handfull of video game companies in the future, which rule the gaming market.

Let´s hope, that EA doesn´t take over any more racing game studios.
 
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Premium
The issue is whether this is full time employees or contractors. It's shitty if you are a full time staff member and they drop you just before Christmas but if you're a contractor it's often par for the course unless they'd told you you were guaranteed a contract extension.

A lot of tech contracts finish X many months post launch/delivery and that would have been factored in when people signed up.

I've known a lot of contractors and it ebbs and flows but they choose to be contractors rather than being tied to a company.

If you've just been screwed over though it's a pretty low thing to do.
 
I am a huge f1 fan for... 40 years probably (since 5 year old or so). I am a huge racing/simracing fan. In the last 10 years I bought 2 F1 games. Not a single one in the last 4 years. Well, I bought them in the last 2 years because of the VR thing and refunded because their quality was subpar in my opinion. That's it.
 
I support Codie guys
They just do the hard work, while EA use their whips... Yeah they can1t finish a game in time, especially when the owner used to fire them out of the office ... before Xmas? They have families, children, wives, husbands etc. What a "nice" gift, Electronic Arts?

So sad.
 
I feel for them. Having been made redundant before Christmas myself many years ago it was a worrying time. Companies like to spin it by telling everyone they are doing them a favour by "removing uncertaintly leading up to the holiday period". So yeah, its certain you don't have a job after Christmas, thanks a lot! Hopefully all those affected not just in Codemasters but anyoen else in simlar circumstances moves on and finds something better.
 
So that mean that Codie are next line after Bullfrog, Westwood Studios, Origin System, NuFX, Pandemic Studios, Playfish, Blackbox Games, DreamWorks Interactive, Phenomic Game Dev, Victory Games, Mythic Entertaiment, Maxis Software, EA Salt Lake, Visceral Games.
At the end of the story, instead having older pro or proprietary engines, they can go cheap with Unreal Engine and outsorce everything to freelancers for a token and easly change them when it's over.

Codemaster have made thier mistakes (dirt 5 and dirt showdown anyone?), but i don't like this short term profit view wich is plaguing all videogames industry. We never got a videogame golden era (crappy games have always existed), but i miss those times when games were made with passion to earn profit and not a yearly cash grab product.

EA has pushed (and still pushing) massively WRC giving to every racing youtuber, but if want to sell product wouldn't be better give more time and resources to development? But i forgot as always about the majority of new videogames generations are more interested in subscription and virtual currency, so thanks EA for create this bad trend in 2009.
And I forget about preoders, another cancer/trick abused to sell to users unfinished products. But hey, you got a small digital shiny extra and 3 days of play before release.
 
Thanks for the clickbait article with close to no concrete info. Is it really necessary to brew further tension toward a studio that is clearly losing their feet ?
And I mean if the we do not know more, we can also just assume that they fired the guy that was not able to figure out how a simple save/load setup should be working along with the guys responsible for the QA on those Mexico and snow stages unable to identify the correct brightness level ? Or maybe the one that forgot that bloom should come from the headlight themsevles and not their reflection on the floor ?
 
Premium
I'm really disappointed with EA Sports WRC. You can tell that the DR team were basically told to whack new cars and stages in (which, to their credit, are very well done), but then make the physics more arcade. I don't know WTF they did to the tarmac physics but it feels like on tarmac you only have 180 degrees of steering rotation lock to lock compared to 900 on gravel/snow, which makes the transition between the two, say at Monte Carlo, very noticeable and very jarring.

If this is the quality of product they're aiming for then I'm absolutely devastated, DR was a promising future for rally gaming but it's just gone down the same crappy Forza-style 200mph everywhere pit.

I'm really sad that people are losing their jobs as per the EA playbook. I hope this motivates them to go and get together to make a proper rally sim to finally top RBR.
 
It's the result of certain companies having administrators who only think about profit, now they're firing Codemaster's best engineers, and by 2024 who's going to do wrc is probably the same group that made dirt 5.
 
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This just a sign of the times...

COVID gave people a lot of hope that the post COVID world would involve more free time...

But that just hasn't been the case as we've struggled to get near to what we had before COVID in many different areas... Leaving us very time poor...

It's lead to far too much tribalism in sim racing as people don't have the time and want to justify the one game they choose to spend their limited time in is the right one... And oversell the game as a result...

And if there isn't the time, there isn't the money being spent...
 

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