Another sad but unavoidable news for racing game fans. Slightly Mad Studios announced that two of its racing sims Project CARS and Project CARS 2 will be delisted.
Project CARS 2 will be delisted first starting September 21.
Project CARS will be delisted starting October 3.
In a Twitter post, the developer cited “expiring car and track licenses” as its reason for the delisting.
However, should you still own them, the games will remain playable, including multiplayer. So the servers are not shut down.
This is unfortunately not an uncommon issue with racing games. These titles are not able to remain available indefinitely due to licensing issues. Games from the Need For Speed and the Forza series have continuously been affected by this.
Slightly Mad Studios made their name with the sim-focused Need For Speed Shift and Shift 2 Unleashed under EA. As the subtitle implied, it was a shift from the arcade street racing the series was famous for to a more grounded racing sim in tracks. The developers then moved to make their own IP with Project CARS, focusing even more on realism to the delight of hardcore sim racing enthusiasts, following a successful crowdfunding campaign, and followed that up with Project CARS 2.
Though more recently the developers have been suffering from misses. The Fast And Furious game was… a thing, and Project CARS 3 shifted back to Need For Speed Shift’s blend of realism (which compared to the previous 2 Project CARS game, is significantly toned down). Slightly Mad was acquired by Codemasters, which then got acquired by EA.