Motorsport Games to Lay Off 40% of Workforce

Motorsport Games lays off workforce.jpg
Sim racing's greatest soap opera storyline has taken another turn. Motorsport Games plans to lay off a large portion of its workforce.

Image credit: Motorsport Games

It is perhaps more than fair to say that there is a very negative perception of Motorsport Games. The studio has been in control of the licences for the British Touring Car Championship, IndyCar and the 24 hours of Le Mans. They have promised standalone titles for each series.

However, Le Mans Ultimate is seemingly to be the only one materialising so far. The FIA WEC/Le Mans game is still looking at a release next month. But even if the game is successful, the reputation MSG has garnered may well prove difficult to overcome.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1648824796623372290

Now, more reason to feed those negative connotations. The Miami-based studio announces plans to lay off 40% of its workforce.

Motorsport Games Redundancies​

In a recent SEC filing, there is a section called 'Item 2.05 Costs Associated with Exit or Disposal Activities'. The text beneath the heading, makes reference to workforce based predominantly in Australia and the United Kingdom.

The filing claims that the studio needs to reduce its operating costs, and that making them redundant would cost $500,000 at most. Motorsport Games reportedly outlined the plans on 29 October and it aims to complete the workforce lay offs in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1709916617402994838

This revelation comes not long after MSG sold the NASCAR console licence to iRacing. After acquiring 704Games who developed the NASCAR Heat 5 title that MSG published, the company went on to develop NASCAR 21: Ignition and NASCAR Rivals.

One must not forget the many disgruntled employees coming out claiming they had not been paid in time. This included one threatening to leak source code of NASCAR Heat 5, NASCAR 21: Ignition, KartKraft and the unreleased IndyCar game.

What do you make of this latest filing from Motorsport Games? Tell us on Twitter at @OverTake_gg or in the comments down below!
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Luca [OT]
Luca Munroe
Biggest sim racing esports fan in the world.

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ozziecoops
The worst thing is these workers getting layed off before XMAS, S397 is doing rf2 and LMU if its a success rf2 will be used for all their future content, As for going broke new release and a new race control for rf2 means money, over 10 k signed up to the beta already. The rf2 engine suits a single series sim over the way rf2 is, much easier to remove things not needed in rf2.
Everyone wants to see MSG fail, but S397 wont fail and they are MSG'S biggest assets, it would be bought immediately if went up for sale.

I bet MSG is still here next yr, and ppl still saying its doomed.
PS remember rf2 will be around forever like its little brother rf1.
 
Rot Teufel
Well, nothing new from general videogames world sadly. Embracer Group, Epic, EA (whole Ascendant Studios cut off after Avernum fiasco), Bungie, Team17, Activision Blizzard have done all of them work force cuts.
This happens if you don't have any long term view and buying compulsively stupid exclusive licences as they did for Indycar when their 2022 income was -36 $ milion.

Second that, in the last 5 years the entire videogame industry is setting always a new low standard (expecially in the last 3 years), with narrow realease windows wich led to buggy and unoptimized games, poor internal team cordination and too much budget spent on marketing. And it's even users fault, expecially when buying games complusively on pre-order.

Recently with introduction of upscaling technologies (DLSS, FSR,XeSS), absurdly abused and reccomanded even at 1080p for 30fps experience (in 2023 imho 30 fps should be not consider as a target anymore, expecially on racing games) everything has become more ridicolous.
Don't get me wrong, imho it's a cool addition and potentially can help people who plays with VR, triple or ultrawide 4k monitors, and could give a longer lifespan to videocards when they became older. But it shouldn't be used as an excuse for not optimizing games.

If I will have the money to buy the actual overprice videocard gen (both nVidia and AMD) and expecially their top dogs, i would like to expect to play at native resolution smooth with (at least) high refresh 1080p/1440p monitors.
 
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Botmeister
For the comments on people being fired. We don't know how the procedure went (or will be going). It's good to be empathetic about it, but for all we know they might get a fine deal or (hopefully) at least the right to social security.
 
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BillyBobSenna
Premium
My take is it seems MSG is having some issues. 40% workforce reductions typically don’t happen with healthy companies.
 
RichardHessels
BillyBobSenna said:
My take is it seems MSG is having some issues. 40% workforce reductions typically don’t happen with healthy companies.
Click to expand...
What if these people are not needed anymore, as they have less titles to produce.
They ditched 3 big projects before they came out with the layoffs.
 
Andy_J
Well the writing has been on the wall for some time. After all, the communities most impartial freelance sim racing journalist and sim racing vlogger Austin Ogonoski made several youtube videos about this dodgy strange company and it's CEO. :)
 
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R
These "business" articles always show the worst side of the simracing community : misinformation, mixing ideas to add drama, maiing assumptions without analyzing facts...

Just a few inputs :

- why would S397 suffer from that event if it is the only active team currently ?

- why would Le Mans Ultimate be a failure if one of your fav team, S397, is still on it and MSF taking measures to be able to continue the activity ? The only thing that can put the game in danger is that key deceloppers decide to go elsewhere if a volontary departure plan is implemented (and about this, we won't have any information before some weeks or months). So, ATM, everything is planned to develop and support LMU ; on the contrary, if these 40% cuts in the "workforce" weren't done, you could have high doubts about LMU's future.

- about the 40% of the "workforce", what are we speaking about exactly? Salaries ? Full time equivalents ? Kn these 40% how much are permanent st1ff and temporary staff ? Again, I repeat myself each time, these are serious topics that need accurare information ; don't write about these subjects if you don't have the necessary background. Overtake recrutez a CFO (I assume he has been found since the offer had been published), why not spealing with him about these subject before publishing inaccurate information ?

- indeed, if these are mainly temporary budgeted workforce, although it is not a good situation, it is part of the job. If these is mainly permanent staff, it may be huge but, even that we zon't have any idea : cut 3 big unproductive heads and you may got at least 50% of the 40%, which is less dramatic than firing only jobs with small salaries.

- There may be just an issue in this company due to having hired to much permanent staff. If you do so and experienced loss of activity, which is absolutely normal in the entertianment business, you may face this kind of issue. As we don't know that information, it is hard to say it is a bad signe for the company (a bad situation for the employees, that's sure!). Maybe some overambition led to that situation with an oversized permanent staff and MSG isnjust going back to the regular size it should have ilplemented since the beginning. No conclusion can be drawn with so few information.

- Ok, as I couldn't understand the "redundant costs", I read the famous text. It as nothing to do with redundant costs, "redudancy" is just the act of firing people. So the costs of firing these 38 persons is between US$400K and US$500K. It is not a lot, between 10K and 13K per person, considering betwen 25% and 50% will go un taxes. We still don't know whether there are temporary contracts in these 38 employees, which could explain these low figures. As I said, it would be better to fire 3 incompetents managers, it should be easy to find some, considering how.bad this company and the developments has been managed throughout it qhort existence. ; you would for sure be able to keep 10 productive employees.

- Again, the company isn't the bad character of.the story, it is the victim. Let's remember that a company has a moral personality and that it doesn't aim to fail. Those who lanaged the company are the bad ones. Let's stop colsidering them the same way.

- Nascar Heat 5 has not been developped.by the original team which had developped Nascar Heat 4 and the previous titles. That's why NH5 is a copy paste and that the last skin DLC broke the game. The orginal developping team is now owned by iracing, and they keep doing their games, the last being the Dirt Racing World which have been well received (as SRX the game before). Unfortunately the hopes for iracing making a Nascar Racing 2003 successor are pretty low imo, we will more probably get a Nascar Heat 5 successor with the original team behind, with hopefully some improvements. Why iracing would canibalize its own cash cow by making a low cost game (in comparison to iracing) equammy realistic? So no, the next Nascar game going to iracing is not the best piece of news there.

There may be other things I forgot but that's already a lot. Maybe some dedicated moderators could help checking facts and raise the level of the discussion. Information is a key the base, of an interesting discussion.

EDIT : iracing is the big winner there, it has made the right move again at the right moment, cutting any potential competition for the dirt and nascar series by acquiring Nascar Heat developpent studio and the licenses. You want to play Nascar and have fun? We got the simplified game. You want the full realistic experience? Subscribe to our iracing plateform. There is no alternative. That's strategic and constructive moves at their best.
 
Last edited:
T
roadyroad said:
These "business" articles always show the worst side of the simracing community : misinformation, mixing ideas to add drama, maiing assumptions without analyzing facts...

Just a few inputs :

- why would S397 suffer from that event if it is the only active team currently ?

- why would Le Mans Ultimate be a failure if one of your fav team, S397, is still on it and MSF taking measures to be able to continue the activity ? The only thing that can put the game in danger is that key deceloppers decide to go elsewhere if a volontary departure plan is implemented (and about this, we won't have any information before some weeks or months). So, ATM, everything is planned to develop and support LMU ; on the contrary, if these 40% cuts in the "workforce" weren't done, you could have high doubts about LMU's future.

- about the 40% of the "workforce", what are we speaking about exactly? Salaries ? Full time equivalents ? Kn these 40% how much are permanent st1ff and temporary staff ? Again, I repeat myself each time, these are serious topics that need accurare information ; don't write about these subjects if you don't have the necessary background. Overtake recrutez a CFO (I assume he has been found since the offer had been published), why not spealing with him about these subject before publishing inaccurate information ?

- indeed, if these are mainly temporary budgeted workforce, although it is not a good situation, it is part of the job. If these is mainly permanent staff, it may be huge but, even that we zon't have any idea : cut 3 big unproductive heads and you may got at least 50% of the 40%, which is less dramatic than firing only jobs with small salaries.

- There may be just an issue in this company due to having hired to much permanent staff. If you do so and experienced loss of activity, which is absolutely normal in the entertianment business, you may face this kind of issue. As we don't know that information, it is hard to say it is a bad signe for the company (a bad situation for the employees, that's sure!). Maybe some overambition led to that situation with an oversized permanent staff and MSG isnjust going back to the regular size it should have ilplemented since the beginning. No conclusion can be drawn with so few information.

- Ok, as I couldn't understand the "redundant costs", I read the famous text. It as nothing to do with redundant costs, "redudancy" is just the act of firing people. So the costs of firing these 38 persons is between US$400K and US$500K. It is not a lot, between 10K and 13K per person, considering betwen 25% and 50% will go un taxes. We still don't know whether there are temporary contracts in these 38 employees, which could explain these low figures. As I said, it would be better to fire 3 incompetents managers, it should be easy to find some, considering how.bad this company and the developments has been managed throughout it qhort existence. ; you would for sure be able to keep 10 productive employees.

- Again, the company isn't the bad character of.the story, it is the victim. Let's remember that a company has a moral personality and that it doesn't aim to fail. Those who lanaged the company are the bad ones. Let's stop colsidering them the same way.

- Nascar Heat 5 has not been developped.by the original team which had developped Nascar Heat 4 and the previous titles. That's why NH5 is a copy paste and that the last skin DLC broke the game. The orginal developping team is now owned by iracing, and they keep doing their games, the last being the Dirt Racing World which have been well received (as SRX the game before). Unfortunately the hopes for iracing making a Nascar Racing 2003 successor are pretty low imo, we will more probably get a Nascar Heat 5 successor with the original team behind, with hopefully some improvements. Why iracing would canibalize its own cash cow by making a low cost game (in comparison to iracing) equammy realistic? So no, the next Nascar game going to iracing is not the best piece of news there.

There may be other things I forgot but that's already a lot. Maybe some dedicated moderators could help checking facts and raise the level of the discussion. Information is a key the base, of an interesting discussion.

EDIT : iracing is the big winner there, it has made the right move again at the right moment, cutting any potential competition for the dirt and nascar series by acquiring Nascar Heat developpent studio and the licenses. You want to play Nascar and have fun? We got the simplified game. You want the full realistic experience? Subscribe to our iracing plateform. There is no alternative. That's strategic and constructive moves at their best.
Click to expand...
I currently read quite often that the SRX game is well recieved wich is total rubbish in my book. It has 150 reviews - with 90 % average, I will give them that - but there is noone playing the freakin' game. It has like 1 player average per day, so propably doing worse than GPL. The other game by Monster Games on Steam has not more than ten players on average. How anyone considers this as "well recieved" is far beyond me. :rolleyes:

I mean, technicaly speaking they could still be good games but there is a reason why noone is playing them. If rF2 MP was ever considered a ghost town then what's this? A vacuum?
 
BillyBobSenna
Premium
RichardHessels said:
What if these people are not needed anymore, as they have less titles to produce.
They ditched 3 big projects before they came out with the layoffs.
Click to expand...
I think healthy growing companies don't ditch 3 big projects and lay-off 40% of their workforce.
 
pz666
As concerning as this might be... Especially for the work force who were living their dream of working on a sim racing title...

This by itself just isn't really anything major... The BTCC news is far bigger IMHO...

This was always expected to happen to make the accounting look better to their shareholders... As MSGS has been poorly run for years and haven't made any progress in making themselves a viable company...

MSGS could easily find another cash cow to keep it afloat or sell off it's assets...

That rF2 physics code will sell... With all the other titles struggling in the physics department there will be a very high price on that bit of tech... So rF2 will be fine...
 
R
tr1v1um said:
I currently read quite often that the SRX game is well recieved wich is total rubbish in my book. It has 150 reviews - with 90 % average, I will give them that - but there is noone playing the freakin' game. It has like 1 player average per day, so propably doing worse than GPL. The other game by Monster Games on Steam has not more than ten players on average. How anyone considers this as "well recieved" is far beyond me. :rolleyes:

I mean, technicaly speaking they could still be good games but there is a reason why noone is playing them. If rF2 MP was ever considered a ghost town then what's this? A vacuum?
Click to expand...
If this is the only valuable information of my post... It was just a piece of information for those who mentionned the bad Nascar Heat games and the new game being in competent hands, being most probably the same hands (except Heat5, which explains the debacle around the last update), and my point of view about that team.

And now you are bashing a low cost (low priced) game aimed at a small group of people about a US oval racing category, not even comparable to Nascar as it is a recent creation, no one knows a damn thing around the world. No proper marketing (low cost), just using some communication around Tony Stewart whose notoriety may have slighlty increased abroad thanks to the previous game which was named "Tony Stewart"s All American Racing", and who seems a huge ego driven person, but I may be wrong, and who he is a really active personnality in the sport (SRX championship is its creation). I didn't know anything about him before these games. No wonder it is not the kind of franchise like Formula One, don't you think? And it is not a full sim, just a casual racing game, with believable physics in order to recreate the intense experience of SRX for the few people who like the sport. Why would there be more active players now? It is this kind of low priced game you buy and enjoyed and play some times just for the fun. You don't train during hours just to be competitive against other players. By the way, racing with AI in this game (and previous games from the studio) is far superior than most of our super serious sims offer.

90% positive reviews is heavy, even if they are only 150 reviews. "Well received" doesn't mean it was a huge hit, just that those who dared to try the game have been positively surprised by its quality. Just try the game. And, before, watch Billy Strange's video review, which states rightfully that he takes the game for what it is supposed to be. It's not a sim. And I must say I didn't like him in his Inside Sim Racing time, maybe it was just the editing, but his channel has been / was (because not really active anymore) really high quality, and he knows what he is speaking about as an oval dirt driver (he helped iracing Sprint cars development).

If your criteria of quality is sales, SRX may seem a bad game (do you know its rentability?). Like Arkane's games, Dark Messiah, Dishonored 1&2, Prey didn't sell well, although they are masters of art, for you they are just garbage. Ok, I'm exagerating, SRX the Game isn't in the same league but you understood my point, sales don't show quality, just marketing and trends.

Anyway, all of this is too off topic and was far from my points.

EDIT : just one thing : can you imagine the work on AI in these low cost casual games to be believable in the short time development while our fav simracing developpers haven't been able to match in many years? The industry should really ask itself what the proprieties are.
 
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