Motorsport Games' BTCC Title Might Be Delayed, President Stephen Hood Leaves

New BTCC Game Might Not Release in 2022.jpg
Following in the footsteps of the classic TOCA games, the BTCC was supposed to make a comeback to the sim racing stage with its own game in 2022: Announced in the summer of 2020, many touring car fans are looking forward to the title - however, it looks like its release might get pushed back.

As Traxion, a part of developer Motorsport Games, has learned, the new BTCC game's schedule is now listed as "to be determined" instead of a 2022 release. This became apparent in a call of Motorsport Games, outlining the plans for future titles - games like the brand-new IndyCar and WEC games announced earlier (and scheduled for release in 2023) are still listed, while the BTCC game has been demoted to merely a footnote.

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After the release of NASCAR 21: Ignition that was plagued by bugs, this may hint at a "get-it-right" approach regarding the BTCC game - another game release like the NASCAR one would not have looked great for Motorsport Games, which is likely what the developer is trying to avoid. Even if the BTCC game has been pushed back indefinitely, the developer still holds the license until 2027 - more than enough time to create a worthy successor in spirit to the old TOCA games.

President Hood Leaves Motorsport Games​

However, this is not all. According to Traxion, Motorsport Games President Stephen Hood is no longer with the company. A change in the bio of his Twitter profile seems to confirm this. However, no word is out on the reasons of Hood's departure.

Update: Stephen Hood left the company already on January 21, 2022 after his position was eliminated. CEO Dmitry Kozko will assume all responsibilities of overseeing Motorsport Games Development Studio, the PDF on their corporate website states.​

The last time the BTCC had an exclusive, standalone game was in 1998 when TOCA 2 Touring Cars (or Touring Car Challenge in the US) was released. It then evolved into the Race Driver series, which featured many more different classes, and eventually laid the cornerstone for the current GRID series.

What do you think about the game possibly being delayed? How much are you looking forward to a dedicated BTCC game for the first time in more than 20 years? Let us know in the comments!
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About author
Yannik Haustein
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

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O
This whole ongoing exposé is really just going through the motions isn't it.. I know its good to get it out there in the open and everything, but can anyone say they're genuinely surprised this company is an investment scam?

I was sure about it when they materialized out of thin-air and announced their absurdly ambitious game lineup, just as I am now. And thats not really bragging, its just common sense. The signs of a total grift has never been more plain to see. I figure most people just went, "yep, that's a scam" and put it out of their minds.

This isn't something totally plausible like the Mad Box, guys.
 
Austin Ogonoski
orange400 said:
This whole ongoing exposé is really just going through the motions isn't it.. I know its good to get it out there in the open and everything, but can anyone say they're genuinely surprised this company is an investment scam?
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I mean they literally duped four major racing series into partnering with them, as well as Studio 397, Romain Grosjean, and Fernando Alonso.

So yes, there are going to be a fair number of people surprised.
 
Bram Hengeveld
Staff
Premium
MJQT said:
MSG's concerning, seemingly misleading (if not dishonest) earnings calls to investors, bleak-looking financial reports, and the leaving-out of the BTCC game on a recent roadmap
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Lol, I am sure there are plenty of wall street blogs where you can find your kicks. :)

No seriously. The moment our users are going to ask us to watch investor calls or go through annual reports of all these esports companies out there is the moment I press control-alt-delete on this website and my career as a simracer and go do something useful with my family or friends :coffee:

But sure, here is someting to chew on as I don't have the answer so I can't report about it and nobody else I have asked seems to have an answer to it, see: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSGM/history?p=MSGM
1649450643606.png

Why is there a turnover of more than 1 million shares on the 31st of March while on a regular day only between 10,000 and 100,000 units are traded.

Again I am not a broker or a trader, i don't know anything about stocks but I find this number intriguing and nobody seems to have an answer what happened that day.
 
O
Austin Ogonoski said:
I mean they literally duped four major racing series into partnering with them, as well as Studio 397, Romain Grosjean, and Fernando Alonso.

So yes, there are going to be a fair number of people surprised.
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NASCAR, Studio 387, Fernando Alonso, etc. aren't the best decision makers but I get your point.

Btw, iirc Motorsport Games initially was selling themselves as an up-and-coming Esports org. The games themselves were just an afterthought towards this end. The real meat being sold to investors was the notion of becoming a major online esport service, with big streaming viewership and such. I guess after the brief sim-racing esports boom during the lockdown, their esport plans died down and then they decided to transition into the NFT scam once that fad started showing promise.

In regards to the esport angle, I suppose I can see major orgs and personalities signing on, as dumb as it was. As for the NFTs, imo the only kind of investors it could attract would have to be self-aware scammers looking to get in on the scam as well. And in that case, theres no need to feel bad about them at all.
 
MJQT
Bram Hengeveld said:
The moment our users are going to ask us to watch investor calls or go through annual reports of all these esports companies out there is the moment I press control-alt-delete on this website and my career as a simracer and go do something useful with my family or friends
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Good point! :D

I think my main reply would be that others in the sim racing community (here or on social media) almost surely brought those concerning MSG developments to the attention of at least one staff person here on RD – no requirement for you or other staff here to monitor or go digging through everything for dirt all the time yourself (that would of course be a ludicrous expectation). But in this case, it wouldn't have been that much work IMO for some staff person here to have quickly listened to or read for themselves the problematic bits already pointed out by the community, then quickly mentioned the "highlights" (lowlights, really) in a news article. Even just to refer readers to read things for themselves, draw their own conclusions.

And maybe you guys don't want to do stuff like that, for whatever reason. Fair enough. But just my personal feedback! :)

Other option – an RD user could write a short, non-speculative article on these troubling MSG recent developments. Then RD could possibly choose to promote that to the front page if it was written well enough (like you did with my open source article a while back, and others since). Maybe that's a better pathway for stuff like this to make the news section in the future?
 
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Austin Ogonoski
Bram Hengeveld said:
But sure, here is someting to chew on as I don't have the answer so I can't report about it and nobody else I have asked seems to have an answer to it, see: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSGM/history?p=MSGM
View attachment 556630
Why is there a turnover of more than 1 million shares on the 31st of March while on a regular day only between 10,000 and 100,000 units are traded.

Again I am not a broker or a trader, i don't know anything about stocks but I find this number intriguing and nobody seems to have an answer what happened that day.
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Answered this in my newest video on the company.

It's a pump and dump scheme, just like Dmitry founded in 2004 with Net Element.

 
MJQT
MJQT said:
Other option – an RD user could write a short, non-speculative article on these troubling MSG recent developments. Then RD could possibly choose to promote that to the front page if it was written well enough (like you did with my open source article a while back, and others since). Maybe that's a better pathway for stuff like this to make the news section in the future?
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Oh wait, @Austin Ogonoski already did something like this! :p
 
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S
I know it is a dividing topic but SaaS is the only way forward for sim racing. Essentially all the DLC is SaaS without the service. I’m not a huge fan of iRacing but I work in the software industry and those guys have a sustainable business model that although not perfect delivers to the sim community.
 
G
"How much are you looking forward to a dedicated BTCC game for the first time in more than 20 years?"

Not at all, since it probably doesn't have VR support and since it came from the same owners as the recent Nascar game(correct me if I'm wrong).

"What do you think about the game possibly being delayed?"

It's a great thing that it's delayed, so they can try to not ruin this release and then they can take the time that is neede to implement VR to the new game. The delay gives me a little bit new hope. Let's hope that the make the right decisions now.
 
Wayne Hutchison
trichens said:
It is. Comes from their financial US Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-K reports.
For 2020 ( dated March 24 2021 ) and for 2021 ( dated March 30 2022)
So in theory in seven weeks time MSG must pay TOCA ( for BTCC ) that second payment.

I haven't read both reports fully but it seems they also have to pay the ACO / WEC some not inconsiderable sums - unfortunately a lot of these reports seem to try to obfuscate the true meaning.
Can we have "plain english" please?

A line regarding "Risks" in 2020 report
If we do not provide high-quality products, our business may be negatively impacted
And 2021
We have incurred significant losses since our inception, and we expect to continue to incur losses for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, our
financial condition raises substantial doubt regarding our ability to continue as a going concern.
AND
We will require additional capital to meet our financial obligations, and this capital might not be available on acceptable terms or at all
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Looks like they have another big payment of $3.2M to Luminis later this month

"Acquisition of Studio397 On April 20, 2021, we closed the transactions contemplated by the share purchase agreement dated April 1, 2021 with Luminis International BV (“Luminis”) and Technology In Business B.V. (“TIB”) pursuant to which we purchased from TIB 100% of the share capital of Studio397. The purchase price for the shares was $16,000,000, discounted to $15,911,781, payable in two installments, as follows: $12,800,000 at closing and $3,200,000 on the one-year anniversary of closing. See Note 3 – Acquisitions – Studio397 in our consolidated financial statements for additional information."

https://ir.motorsportgames.com/static-files/43f35959-47b5-42ce-8349-3b844053d508 page 49

Also from same document page 85:

"Studio397’s results of operations for the period from April 20, 2021 to December 31, 2021 included approximately $845,000 in revenues and $1,857,000 in net losses."
 
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S
Bram Hengeveld said:
No seriously. The moment our users are going to ask us to watch investor calls or go through annual reports of all these esports companies out there is the moment I press control-alt-delete on this website and my career as a simracer and go do something useful with my family or friends :coffee:
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Except nobody did that. You have been pointed directly to specific investor calls and annual reports needed to confirm the story. No need to go through all of those for all the companies. The work is already done for this story - you just need to check the sources and put it forward.

What's the issue anyway? That those are only rumors, or that it's too much work to hold you to that standard - of which neither is true? You need to set your story straight.

So far, in order to ignore the story, you have:
- talked these reports down as "rumors" when there are clearly more than that,
- attacked me personally by suggesting my journalistic standards are dubious,
- misrepresented my comment entirely by mentioning the irrelevant topic on forums and implying I accused you of censorship (a.k.a. a strawman argument),
- claimed the work expected to cover this story is bigger than it actually is (another strawman argument).

You just keep being extremely dismissive, to the point when one can ask oneself a question if you really just don't think the story is enough to being covered or are you actively acting against covering it by shooting down and disparging any requests to do so.

@Austin Ogonoski @MJQT I think you guys are attributing good will where there simply isn't any. At least all I see from Bram Hengeveld are elaborated "**** off"s. Anybody feel free to convince me otherwise.
 
J
MSG are the Rich Energy of game developers, they talk a big game, and act like a AAA gaming studio, but have zero revenue and nothing to backup any of PR they put out.
Austin Ogonoski has done some great reporting on Motorsport Games. Its worth checking out his YouTube channel if you aren't familiar with all the shady dealings of Motorsport Games.
 
MarcoCav
Bram Hengeveld said:
No seriously. The moment our users are going to ask us to watch investor calls or go through annual reports of all these esports companies out there is the moment I press control-alt-delete on this website and my career as a simracer and go do something useful with my family or friends :coffee:
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That’s a point!
 
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Austin Ogonoski
Bram Hengeveld said:
Lol, I am sure there are plenty of wall street blogs where you can find your kicks. :)

No seriously. The moment our users are going to ask us to watch investor calls or go through annual reports of all these esports companies out there is the moment I press control-alt-delete on this website and my career as a simracer and go do something useful with my family or friends :coffee:
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The problem I found with MSGM, is that's precisely how they were announcing news about their upcoming games. Which made it kinda mandatory to listen to them if you were curious regarding their NASCAR franchise - which I was.

During their Q3 2021 call, they revealed they were exploring ways to implement Ultimate Team into their NASCAR game. That kind of tidbit is exactly what should be on a gaming site, but for whatever reason they held it for a quarterly investor call.

Same with the NFT stuff. I'd like to know if the only NASCAR video game released each year was about to become an NFT hellscape. That matters to me as a NASCAR fan. They kept that info from both RD and their own outlet Traxion, which are platforms designed for this kind of info, instead dropping it on some TD Ameritrade segment.
 
maranello78
I think the problem is always the same, games with no soul, and that's why developer look the simracing with just one visión: success, but if i want to release a game for sure i'll buy Racing games like Rf2, Ac, ACC, Pcars3, Ams2, wreckfest, Dirt2.0, etc and studying what every game has, what's new and what is never done, and for sure what get new on the simracing (Safety Cars, full course yellow, random puncture, random engines failures, etc) and for sure play every game, feels every physics, ffb, graphics, etc and how could be win with a new one, but companies now they don't like motorsports is just a matter of fashion, hey!! People like racing is the new fashion!! So come on we'll make our own Racing Game!!!...Crash, that's why Pcars3 or Nascar21 never win, cause they though on success and money instead of they way how It gets. simracing community buy games with soul made by people that love motorsports, that's why there is an army of people making skins, circuits and mods for free, we need companies games working with people who love motorsports, is the way to success in my opinion
 
trichens
Premium
I don't think it's fair to complain about RD not going into this, or other stories, in any great depth. They are providing us with a platform and a certain amount of "inside information" which we can then discuss and expand on.
Austin, and others, has done some digging around and come up with some interesting conclusions. However,there's nothing WE can do about this situation as it stands.

Unfortunately, the issue seems to be a universal one.
Money men see a market, create plan which allows them to raise finance, acquire firms in the market, show a bit of a profit, raise more financing, etc, etc, etc.
Before you know it there is only a small number of individual businesses in any given field...
 
S
trichens said:
I don't think it's fair to complain about RD not going into this, or other stories, in any great depth. They are providing us with a platform and a certain amount of "inside information" which we can then discuss and expand on.
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I have no problem with that actually.

But RD staff shouldn't come into comments and make up stupid excuses based on false premises for not covering the story, while berating people who call them out on this.
 

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