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Project Cars 1&2 will be delisted due to expired licenses

The first two Project Cars games will be removed from digital storefronts over the next few months.

Ozzie Mejia

August 22, 2022 12:45 PM

Steam

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Nearly ten years ago, the folks at Slightly Mad Studios started up a crowdfunding effort for a new racing game. It was codenamed Project Cars and it was a name that would ultimately stick, even as the first game was originally published by Bandai Namco. Fast-forward to 2022 and the ride appears to be over for the first two games in the series, as developer Slightly Mad Studios announced that Project Cars 1 & 2 will be delisted from digital storefronts over the next few months due to expired vehicle and track licenses.

"The games remain fully playable, and our players will still be able to enjoy all the game features, including multiplayer," reads the post from Slightly Mad on the team's Twitter account. "We will remove Project Cars from sale on October 3 and Project Cars 2 on September 21. We remain focused on making the best sim racing titles, and as mentioned previously, we look forward to sharing more on the next Slightly Mad project when the time is right."

The Project Cars saga began all the way back in 2012 when Slightly Mad raised over $600,000 to fund the game's original development. Bandai Namco eventually came along to publish the sim racer, releasing it in 2015. It proved underwhelming in several aspects, but the enthusiasm was clearly there to the point that the developer wasted almost no time working on the sequel. The Project Cars games were built on featuring as many real-world vehicles as possible, but as one might imagine, maintaining the licenses on those, as well as the various track locations, have proven costly. It should also be noted that Slightly Mad Studios' ownership has changed over the years. In 2019, the developer was picked up by Codemasters, which in turn was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2021. The licensing bill likely came to EA's door, at which point the ride was probably over.

Of course, Project Cars and its sequel won't totally disappear from the face of the planet. Physical copies remain available out in the wild. For those who insist on buying these games digitally, there's still time to grab them, with Wario64 even spotting a few discounts. We'll keep watching this story as it develops, so keep it on Shacknews for any updates.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?