Straight4 Studios Announces Publishing Deal With PLAION

PLAION X Straight4 Studios.jpg
In a recent press release, Straight4 Studios, the team behind the in-development GTR Revival has announced it is joining forces with video game publishing company, PLAION.

Image Credit: PLAION Press page

Led by Ian Bell of Project Cars fame, Straight4 Studios is in the middle of developing its first simracing title as a games studio. GTR Revival is set to be the game every simracer is looking for and, in a recent press release, we have learnt that major game's company PLAION will be responsible for its publishing.

Set to become in the words of Ian Bell himself "a hardcore racing sim," GTR Revival is no doubt a niche title in the gaming market. But it seems the major outfit understands and supports the path. In fact, Klemens Kundratitz the PLAION CEO said, "Straight4 Studios has a fantastic vision."

Hopefully then, the title will remain true to its original goals as the Straight4 team should be given free reign over the project.

Who is PLAION?​

PLAION, previously known as Koch Media is the parent company of many game and film publishing firms. Gaming fans may recognise one of its larger labels, Deep Silver. This is the team behind popular series like Saints Row and Dead Island. Whilst these games franchises hide in the shadows of larger AAA alternatives, one can't knock their creativity and uniqueness.

Saints Row published by PLAION.jpg


When it comes to the simracing and racing game scene, PLAION also acts as the parent company for Milestone. Fans especially of racing on two wheels will be familiar with this publishing brand as it is behind recent MotoGP games, and is currently promoting the next iteration, MotoGP 23. In fact, it is a bike-centric company, also publishing the yearly releases of the World Superbike, Supercross, MotoCross games as well as the Ride franchise.

Finally, Vertigo Games within the PLAION group has deep experience with Virtual Reality. Publishing so-called 'experiences' such as the National Geographic, Anne Frank and Meeting Rembrandt VR titles. It is also behind Space Flight Orbital Emergency and Coaster Combat, two more entertaining VR games.

All in all, it seems the PLAION group of publishing companies has many skills that could prove beneficial to Straight4 Studios. Now, it's up to the two organisations to work together and create the best product they can.

The good news emerging from this announcement is that we can finally be sure that GTR Revival is a serious project. Now that a major company and games giant is onboard, the odds are further in the favour of Straight4.

What do you make of Straight4 teaming up with PLAION?
  • Like
Reactions: NakariNova, Bram Hengeveld, nandorock80 and 1 other person
About author
Angus Martin
Angus Martin
Motorsport gets my blood pumping more than anything else. Be it physical or virtual, I'm down to bang doors.

More in GTRevival

Comments

R
Richard Wilks said:
I get what you are trying to say, but your argument totally falls flat when you compare that with AC rf2 or AMS2, games which even with all that "support", are nothing but polished or a bug free experience. In fact, this whole "Permanent support" thing has failed massively in all fronts, iRacing still has crippling bugs and exploits after how many years? The same for ACC.

No, a game should come almost bug free as soon as it's released. Any "we fix it later" thing is doomed to fail.
Click to expand...
Well,, you miised my point, I wasn't comparing the games, which are tomatoes and apples, but the spirit of the companies behind.

To be accurate, these are 2 distinct business models : the old school one with a big publisher which should release a game in a complete state, and that's what you're paying for, and the other one with an early access release and a reduced development team, and you pay only for promises and expectations.

The point is that in the past, we got full released games with crucial flaws that have never been fixed, although the development team was supported by big publishers, EA, Bandai Namco (not mentioning the successful crowfunding before). It is obvious that not any passionate developper had been proud of that. It is only a top level management decision.

On the contrary, the smaller teams have been showing more respect for their games. Kunos has been the more clever by purely abandonning AC in a good state, despite the missing features, but not promised, to let the modders do the job and never break their work in the future. Raceroom sticks to its initial promise, the game is now in a solid state, some content is released from time to time. AMS2 is still in its youth and, compared to the previous games, it moves quickly in the right direction. ACC is in a solid state after its initial hard times, no game breaking bugs and it is still updated from time to time. Rfactor2 is a really specific case but it has been surprisingly been on a good way for one or two years.

Just imagine if pcars2 had received such dedication after its release, there weren't so much issues to make it the perfect game it was supposed to be. Years after, a modder fixed the FFB, the settings (in a basic ini file) were just ignoring the existing effects of the engine! The automatic clutch, is that so hard to cut (well, to be fair, only Raceroom fully simulates the clutch and the gear shifting)? The real weather, is that so expensive to pay the yearly fee and update the game when the source format changes? The AI would have been a lot of job, I admit, especially when no SMS game has been good in this area (another concern about this new studio, will the money go in the AI at last?).

This is just about top level management decisions, and with the same head, mixed to a publisher which generally treats its games the same way, only doubts and concerns are left. Anyway, I've waisted enough time with that. Let's wait for an interesting communication from the studio (no, a stupid poll to raise the hype is not interesting), what is the project exactly. Because promising a new GTR2 (with the never fixed issues? Well at least I modded the TVR sound engine myself) although no one as been able to do in more than 15 years, is overambitious and need more explanations. The same.for any developper, because next sim racing games should raise the bar and indeed reproduce, with current technologies, what we lost almost 20 years ago although it had been a standard during more than 5 years. Currently, imo, the only company which is in the position to be able to think and communicate about reaching that goal is Kunos. I still have hopes with Reiza but they have a long way ahead with AMS2 (basically, AMS2 will be the GTR revival when it is fully done).

Like I already said, believe the hype, that's good, but I won't.
 
Richard Wilks
roadyroad said:
Well,, you miised my point, I wasn't comparing the games, which are tomatoes and apples, but the spirit of the companies behind.

To be accurate, these are 2 distinct business models : the old school one with a big publisher which should release a game in a complete state, and that's what you're paying for, and the other one with an early access release and a reduced development team, and you pay only for promises and expectations.

The point is that in the past, we got full released games with crucial flaws that have never been fixed, although the development team was supported by big publishers, EA, Bandai Namco (not mentioning the successful crowfunding before). It is obvious that not any passionate developper had been proud of that. It is only a top level management decision.

On the contrary, the smaller teams have been showing more respect for their games. Kunos has been the more clever by purely abandonning AC in a good state, despite the missing features, but not promised, to let the modders do the job and never break their work in the future. Raceroom sticks to its initial promise, the game is now in a solid state, some content is released from time to time. AMS2 is still in its youth and, compared to the previous games, it moves quickly in the right direction. ACC is in a solid state after its initial hard times, no game breaking bugs and it is still updated from time to time. Rfactor2 is a really specific case but it has been surprisingly been on a good way for one or two years.

Just imagine if pcars2 had received such dedication after its release, there weren't so much issues to make it the perfect game it was supposed to be. Years after, a modder fixed the FFB, the settings (in a basic ini file) were just ignoring the existing effects of the engine! The automatic clutch, is that so hard to cut (well, to be fair, only Raceroom fully simulates the clutch and the gear shifting)? The real weather, is that so expensive to pay the yearly fee and update the game when the source format changes? The AI would have been a lot of job, I admit, especially when no SMS game has been good in this area (another concern about this new studio, will the money go in the AI at last?).

This is just about top level management decisions, and with the same head, mixed to a publisher which generally treats its games the same way, only doubts and concerns are left. Anyway, I've waisted enough time with that. Let's wait for an interesting communication from the studio (no, a stupid poll to raise the hype is not interesting), what is the project exactly. Because promising a new GTR2 (with the never fixed issues? Well at least I modded the TVR sound engine myself) although no one as been able to do in more than 15 years, is overambitious and need more explanations. The same.for any developper, because next sim racing games should raise the bar and indeed reproduce, with current technologies, what we lost almost 20 years ago although it had been a standard during more than 5 years. Currently, imo, the only company which is in the position to be able to think and communicate about reaching that goal is Kunos. I still have hopes with Reiza but they have a long way ahead with AMS2 (basically, AMS2 will be the GTR revival when it is fully done).

Like I already said, believe the hype, that's good, but I won't.
Click to expand...
Again, i think you missed my point.

You see, the games you mention there as good examples of the "right" attitude, are not good examples for me.

AC1 : A barebones game, that was quickly abandoned as soon as the dev sold out, and got a lucrative contract to make another game. The fact that modders picked (some) of the slack was never a plan, and the negative reactions that even Stefano had about the shaders patch initially is proof of that.

ACC: A barebones GT3 game, sure, it has plenty content, and is solid as an experience, after YEARS of corrective patches, but its still poorly optimized, has barebones features compared with for example a codies F1, and it has physics exploits galore. Again, this all after years of supposed "support".

AMS2: Its a massive bugfest at the moment, the physics are all over the place, and has updates constantly. It has been years in the pan, they started with a solid engine with known bugs, and managed to introduce some of their own while trying to fix some of the existing ones, and the end product so far is lacking so much polish that one can argue if it will ever get there.

RF2: much the case like AMS2, except this one has been going around exchanging hands, and is now in the hands of the a "studio" that is losing money and can go under at any minute. Still bugs, still barebones experience.

RRE: the most solid of the lot, but thats because its basically a game engine that soon will be 20, yes, 20 years old, and altough it has a good roster of content, its also a barebones experience.



Now you might think this is amazing, but if we compare this with the fact that codies has launched yearly iterations of the F1 games, milestone the motoGP, PCars had 3 iterations, etc etc, Its a matter of you picking your poison, and i rather pick the poison that gives me a game to play, rather than games that would look barebones and featurless 20 years ago, not to mention crippling bugs and unplayable scenarios.
 

Latest News

Article information

Author
Angus Martin
Article read time
2 min read
Views
8,089
Comments
62
Last update

Share this article

What is the reason for your passion for sim racing?

  • Watching real motorsport

    Votes: 176 66.9%

  • Physics and mechanics

    Votes: 114 43.3%

  • Competition and adrenaline

    Votes: 121 46.0%

  • Practice for real racing

    Votes: 48 18.3%

  • Community and simracers

    Votes: 71 27.0%
See comments…
Back
Top