Motorsport Games has been a controversial name in sim racing for a few years now. In 2024, the company behind Le Mans Ultimate is trying to right the ship - but what led to its current situation?
Motorsport Games has been in the spotlight of plenty of news stories of the past few years. The publisher who also owns Studio 397 has a difficult standing with many sim racers, to say the least, and the continuous downward spiral of the company did not exactly help things. More recently, MSG shrunk its workforce, with redundancies affecting junior employees in particular.
MSG's current strategy according to CEO Stephen Hood is clear: reduce costs to balance revenue and expenses in order to find an investor or buyer to give Le Mans Ultimate a chance at a future beyond the 2024 WEC content that is still due to be implemented. The company's current situation is a result of mistakes having been made years ago - including one particular game release.
"You have to retrace the steps of Motorsport Games", Hood answered when quizzed about how MSG got into its current tricky situation. "After its formation in 2018, the company grew rapidly. Everybody knows the backstory: We chased licenses, we acquired licenses, we delivered an undercooked NASCAR game. That started the downhill period."
Image: Motorsport Games
October 26, 2021, can be considered as the starting point of the Motorsport Games drama. That is when NASCAR 21: Ignition was released - and hardly worked for players. "Gamers will accept late products, but they don't really accept poor or unfinished products - or broken ones, in the case of NASCAR", states Hood. "Gaming is fiercely competitive, players are spoilt for choice. You deliver crap and you get crap results - that's just the way it is."
Apparently, this is something Hood warned MSG about before the release of the game. He left the company in early 2022, but when he came back in 2023, "my email box was still active hand all of my history. One of the last messages I had sent included a point I made to the company, which is "if we release this NASCAR game and it's not ready, we'll never recover"." MSG did release the game - and is still feeling the effects today.
That is not to say that the botched release of NASCAR 21: Ignition was the sole reason for MSG's downturn - although the other reasons are rooted in a similar time frame. The number of licenses MSG held at one point - NASCAR, BTCC, IndyCar, Le Mans, plus the existing platforms of KartKraft and rFactor 2, proved to be too much.
The unfinished IndyCar game was relatively far along already. Image: Motorsport Games
What MSG also did not do, as Hood stresses, is to steal licenses from other publishers and studios, as some in the sim racing community have accused them of. "The truth behind the curtain is somewhat different to what people discuss on Reddit: "They stole all of these licenses, they made them exclusive, they conned people and they couldn't even deliver the projects". There is some truth to that", Hood admits, but adds: "We did collect the licenses, but back in the day, nobody wanted the IndyCar license. We weren't fighting anybody for it. Nobody wanted the BTCC license. Nobody was at the table."
It is worth noting that Reiza Studios intended to add a Dallara IR-18, the current vehicle run in IndyCar, to Automobilista 2 in 2022, which eventually did not happen. While the car had appeared in screenshots, it was scratched in its authentic form and later morphed into the semi-fictional F-USA 2023. Supposedly, this was related to Reiza's talks with IndyCar and the licensing situation, but the compromise of taking the IR-18 out did allow the Brazilian studio to add Indianapolis Motor Speedway as part of the Racin' USA Pt. 3 DLC. Motorsport Games did hold the IndyCar license at that point already, however.
F-USA 2023 car in AMS2 with a 2024 IndyCar livery applied. Image: @Henrique Freitas
Having gotten LMU off the ground, even in Early Access, marked an important step in Hood's plan, too.
"The company has been so huge, had lots of missteps, so it actually had to get itself to deliver a project", states Hood. "It's a games company - if you can't deliver a product, what are you doing? Just spending money? Delivery of LMU was to prove that we can make something that people would enjoy, and I think we've ticked that box."
Is it going to be enough to save the Le Mans Ultimate project? Time will tell, but for the sake of those who enjoy the official WEC simulator, we would hope so. LMU has the full 2024 Hypercar grid already available, and the LMGT3 contenders are set to follow soon. Two tracks are missing to fully recreate the 2024 calendar in Lusail and Interlagos, with Imola and COTA having been added in June and September, respectively.
Motorsport Games has been in the spotlight of plenty of news stories of the past few years. The publisher who also owns Studio 397 has a difficult standing with many sim racers, to say the least, and the continuous downward spiral of the company did not exactly help things. More recently, MSG shrunk its workforce, with redundancies affecting junior employees in particular.
MSG's current strategy according to CEO Stephen Hood is clear: reduce costs to balance revenue and expenses in order to find an investor or buyer to give Le Mans Ultimate a chance at a future beyond the 2024 WEC content that is still due to be implemented. The company's current situation is a result of mistakes having been made years ago - including one particular game release.
"You have to retrace the steps of Motorsport Games", Hood answered when quizzed about how MSG got into its current tricky situation. "After its formation in 2018, the company grew rapidly. Everybody knows the backstory: We chased licenses, we acquired licenses, we delivered an undercooked NASCAR game. That started the downhill period."
Image: Motorsport Games
NASCAR 21: Ignition - Promise Turned Into Problems
The game in question was NASCAR 21: Ignition, which had a lot of promise on paper - a NASCAR game using Studio 397's physics as a base? Sim racers were excited for that. But then, the game was released.October 26, 2021, can be considered as the starting point of the Motorsport Games drama. That is when NASCAR 21: Ignition was released - and hardly worked for players. "Gamers will accept late products, but they don't really accept poor or unfinished products - or broken ones, in the case of NASCAR", states Hood. "Gaming is fiercely competitive, players are spoilt for choice. You deliver crap and you get crap results - that's just the way it is."
Apparently, this is something Hood warned MSG about before the release of the game. He left the company in early 2022, but when he came back in 2023, "my email box was still active hand all of my history. One of the last messages I had sent included a point I made to the company, which is "if we release this NASCAR game and it's not ready, we'll never recover"." MSG did release the game - and is still feeling the effects today.
That is not to say that the botched release of NASCAR 21: Ignition was the sole reason for MSG's downturn - although the other reasons are rooted in a similar time frame. The number of licenses MSG held at one point - NASCAR, BTCC, IndyCar, Le Mans, plus the existing platforms of KartKraft and rFactor 2, proved to be too much.
The unfinished IndyCar game was relatively far along already. Image: Motorsport Games
MSG Did Not Make The Right Decisions
"We got too big too quickly", Hood looks back. "We chased licenses, especially during COVID, and thought "we'll figure out how to deliver these things, because we got lots of money". But money is not the solution to everything. You still have to make the right decisions, recruit the right people, and set yourself the right timelines and quality bars in order to deliver. And we didn't."What MSG also did not do, as Hood stresses, is to steal licenses from other publishers and studios, as some in the sim racing community have accused them of. "The truth behind the curtain is somewhat different to what people discuss on Reddit: "They stole all of these licenses, they made them exclusive, they conned people and they couldn't even deliver the projects". There is some truth to that", Hood admits, but adds: "We did collect the licenses, but back in the day, nobody wanted the IndyCar license. We weren't fighting anybody for it. Nobody wanted the BTCC license. Nobody was at the table."
It is worth noting that Reiza Studios intended to add a Dallara IR-18, the current vehicle run in IndyCar, to Automobilista 2 in 2022, which eventually did not happen. While the car had appeared in screenshots, it was scratched in its authentic form and later morphed into the semi-fictional F-USA 2023. Supposedly, this was related to Reiza's talks with IndyCar and the licensing situation, but the compromise of taking the IR-18 out did allow the Brazilian studio to add Indianapolis Motor Speedway as part of the Racin' USA Pt. 3 DLC. Motorsport Games did hold the IndyCar license at that point already, however.
F-USA 2023 car in AMS2 with a 2024 IndyCar livery applied. Image: @Henrique Freitas
LMU As Proof "That We Can Make Something That People Would Enjoy"
Too much, too fast - it seems like most of MSG's problems boil down to this, and the company still feels the effects of that. While Hood's predecessor (and successor, for that matter) Dmitry Kozko was lauded for in Motorsport Games' statement on his dismissal in April 2023, namely "significant efforts and achievements, especially in fund raising", it looks like Hood employs the opposite strategy.Having gotten LMU off the ground, even in Early Access, marked an important step in Hood's plan, too.
"The company has been so huge, had lots of missteps, so it actually had to get itself to deliver a project", states Hood. "It's a games company - if you can't deliver a product, what are you doing? Just spending money? Delivery of LMU was to prove that we can make something that people would enjoy, and I think we've ticked that box."
Is it going to be enough to save the Le Mans Ultimate project? Time will tell, but for the sake of those who enjoy the official WEC simulator, we would hope so. LMU has the full 2024 Hypercar grid already available, and the LMGT3 contenders are set to follow soon. Two tracks are missing to fully recreate the 2024 calendar in Lusail and Interlagos, with Imola and COTA having been added in June and September, respectively.
