Motorsport Games Delays Indycar Title Past 2023

Indycar on rF2.jpg
Over the weekend, we learnt that Motorsport Games is delaying its much-anticipated Indycar game further. No longer releasing in 2023, those looking forward to the title are not happy.

Image Credit: Studio 397

It has become a running gag that Motorsport Games is yet to release a game fully developed under its own control. And it is even further from creating a successful simracing title.

Well over the weekend, we found out that the studio is not going to release a good simracing title for at least another year. During an investor call on Friday focusing on earning in Q4 of 2022, the management team announced that the much-anticipated Indycar game won't be releasing in 2023.

A snippet of the call posted to Twitter sees Dmitry Kozko, Chief Executive Officer of Motorsport Games, about the current state of the game. Despite "making strides" in the game's development efforts, the team believes it "will not be in a satisfactory position to release to the community this year."

INDYCAR game cover.jpg


Following the news, Indycar iteself responded to Racer Magazine stating: “We are evaluating this information and remain thoroughly committed to bringing the best quality video game products to the INDYCAR community.”

Will the Indycar game ever release?​

Whilst Motorsport Games said the Indycar game is well along in its development and will be ready for 2024, can we really be sure?

This particular title, along with the previously delayed BTCC game, was set for a 2022 release and has been delayed several times since its announcement. From financial struggles to the invasion of Ukraine, countless setbacks have befallen the Motorsport Games development team.

However, the main blockade on this game's path to release is the health of its studio. At the same time as setting up a call with investors detailing the good, the bad and the ugly, Motorsport Games released their Full Year 2022 Financial Results. Going over the company's fourth quarter and full year accounts, there is one glaring issue that could spell disaster for not just the Indycar racing game.


Scroll down past the good news of DLC packs released for rFactor 2 and improvements to NASCAR 21: Ignition. Skip over the bad news of a more-than-four-million-dollar net loss in Q4 of 2022 alone. And you'll arrive at the announcement that a total 2022 revenue of $10.3 million led to net losses in excess of $36 million.

Given the studio doesn't have a successful and current title to rely on, Motorsport Games is in a difficult situation. Negative cash-flow means they are spending more money than they can make. To top off the bad news for Indycar, BTCC, Le Mans Virtual and NASCAR fans, the financial document states the company currently holds around $6 million in cash. The company goes on to mention that "we do not believe we have sufficient cash on hand to fund our operations for the remainder of 2023" and that further investment is needed.

Last year, we reported on the news that MSG lost its entire board of directors. Around the same time, employees of the company were threatening to leak source code for unreleased games due to unpaid salaries. Based on this latest development, will we be seeing more stories along these lines in 2023?

Do you think we will ever see a Motorsport Games Indycar title release?
About author
Angus Martin
Motorsport gets my blood pumping more than anything else. Be it physical or virtual, I'm down to bang doors.

Comments

I must admit I'm surprised MSG managed to make a $10M income without any new game.

They launched a Switch game called Nascar Rivals that is a broken 2022 reskin of the old Nascar Heat 5.

Even working with a fully functional game engine, they managed to broke it. Is not in the same league of the '21 Ignition, but is a lot more sh*t than the old PC version.
 
They launched a Switch game called Nascar Rivals that is a broken 2022 reskin of the old Nascar Heat 5.

Even working with a fully functional game engine, they managed to broke it. Is not in the same league of the '21 Ignition, but is a lot more sh*t than the old PC version.
They shioud sell 4 or 5 crappy games each year then recycling the same games, it would at least enter money. And these must be cheap developpments :D
 
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Following the news, Indycar itself responded to Racer Magazine stating: “We are evaluating this information and remain thoroughly committed to bringing the best quality video game products to the INDYCAR community.”

If they truly want the "best quality video game products" for the community, then please for the love of whatever deity you believe don't sign exclusive license deals. It's no coincidence the late 90s early 00s golden era of video games for series like Formula One (innumerable console titles, Geoff Crammond, EA/ISI) and NASCAR (Papyrus, EA/ISI, Dirt to Daytona) came when all kinds of developers were releasing licensed titles for different platforms.
 
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Hopefully, after another failure, the license will return to iRacing.

And it's good that we have Dallara in RF2, nothing to worry about.
 
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I cannot congratulate strongly enough to IndyCar for that colossal buttfumble. This is, by far, the biggest "shot in the foot via your head" I have ever seen in racing games history.

Of course, "back in the day" it really sounded promising. Racing game having physics of rF2 on UE4 engine? Dedicated IndyCar (and WEC, and BTCC) game for the first time in years?! On paper, it looked amazing. Some would say, that giving exclusive rights to a company, that simply bought S397 and had zero experience making in-house titles was risky, and now we know that for a certain.

Thanks to their inability or maybe even their own decisions, IndyCar took two steps backwards while doing one tiny forward. Yeah, fantastic, we have IR18 in rFactor 2. We have three (?) new laser scanned tracks. Weeeeeeeeeeee...

Meanwhile, they killed AMS2 expansions and destroyed longstanding relation with iRacing. And don't tell me, that giving game rights to MSG forced IndyCar to stop working with the rest. Tell that to NASCAR, that got their "game" while still having good cooperation with iR (of course, it would be unfair to say that without mentioning how close both entities are working right now outside of simracing).

To all of rF2 "fans", that are trying to force others into thinking, that all is good, because at least they have new content: yay, congratulations. I wonder if "official" virtual Indianapolis 500 on rF2 will have at least 1/4 of entries that those on iRacing had. I also wonder how many people who raced in leagues moved to rF2 because of that...

Overall, I really hope someone in Indianapolis will understand, that they were scammed and because of that they lost quite a lot in terms of image.
 
What surprises me most about all this are the motorsport series that sign into deals with this company.

Then again look at Rich Energy and Haas.
 

There has been many news articles and youtube videos of this absolute POS company. I have even uninstalled RF2 as I no longer buy any of their products or DLC. RF2 is one of the worst racing games any way, just a mess in my opinion.
 
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I was hoping the market would swing back to single series games, ACC shows just how good they can be when they are the focus of a talented and passionate team, even the F1 series shows how good a series itself can be simulated.

And in capable hands (not the current chumps) it would have been very cool to see the rFactor platform benefit from that focus and be used in a manner befitting of its capabilities.

A dedicated and focused IndyCar sim is probably number one on the list of games I would want to play, and while its great we have bits and pieces spread across multiple games.....wait, that's not great, That's a bit rubbish and indicative of one the crapholes that racing simulations have got themselves into.

MSG, Be a good day when they collapse, and while they will likely take rF2 down with them, That's a price I'm prepared to pay. Its time.
 
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I cannot believe people are still saying this. Maybe this is the case for (older) mods or not updated old ISI content, but tracks and cars released by S397 over the last couple of years are fine.
yeah not sure what you are smoking saying that, unless you are running it on a very crappy system. With a decent setup and tweaking RF2 on the official content looks great, very close to AMS2 if not quite as polished and considerably better than iRacing/RRE ( and in VR, way better than ACC ).
 
Premium
I was hoping the market would swing back to single series games, ACC shows just how good they can be when they are the focus of a talented and passionate team, even the F1 series shows how good a series itself can be simulated.

And in capable hands (not the current chumps) it would have been very cool to see the rFactor platform benefit from that focus and be used in a manner befitting of its capabilities.

A dedicated and focused IndyCar sim is probably number one on the list of games I would want to play, and while its great we have bits and pieces spread across multiple games.....wait, that's not great, That's a bit rubbish and indicative of one the crapholes that racing simulations have got themselves into.

MSG, Be a good day when they collapse, and while they will likely take rF2 down with them, That's a price I'm prepared to pay. Its time.
Not sure all the RF2 players on LFM would agree with you on that. Or the developers who would lose their jobs. The game is going in the right direction despite the owners rather than because of them. Hopefully they find a way to continue as the work Studio397 have been putting out lately has been fantastic.
 
This is going really bad. They lost $36 millions in a single year and nothing is ready. Even if they publish the game in 2024 how can the investors be confident it's not mediocre at best? And hey it's not that the devs will work for free this year. So they'll find themselves with like 50M loss and only a hope to sell millions of copies. Good luck.
 
History repeating itself, it was the same last year and they got some suckers to bankroll them. They are a dead duck just waiting for the last rites to be read to them
 
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I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the MSGM IndyCar game never sees the light of day—or if, by some chance, MSGM does manage somehow to release something, that it absolutely sucks. For example, does rF2’s Stockcar content satisfy MSGM’s 2021 promise to deliver a “NASCAR sim based on rF2 physics?”
 

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