Bsimracing Sim Racing Resources and News for the racing enthousiast.
Back in July 2020, Miami Florida-based Game developer, publisher, and eSports ecosystem provider Motorsport Games Inc., the parent company above Studio 397 announced that they had acquired an official license to produce a standalone BTCC racing game and eSports series.
The game was originally scheduled to be released somewhere in 2022. Already rumors started to appear that Motorsport Games had lost or canceled the announced official standalone BTCC game. In contrast, Studio 397 proudly announced that several British Touring Car Championship cars would be coming to the Factor 2 racing simulator as addon cars. Then, in June 2022. Executive Chairman, and CEO of Motorsport Games, Dmitry Kozko announced that the official standalone BTCC game was scheduled to be released in 2024.
That said, things do not always go as planned, and in the case of Motorsport Games, things are starting to look a little ugly, after recently losing its NASCAR game license, and laying off 40% of its workforce.
And things just got worse. TOCA who are the rights holders to the British Touring Car Series have announced they officially terminated the BTCC game licensing agreement with Motorsport Games due to ongoing fundamental breaches of the agreement by the fornamed company.
That leaves us with a few more licenses in the Motorsport Games portfolio, including rFactor 2, the Indycar license, and the upcoming Le Mans Ultimate endurance simulator. Let’s hope that at least rFactor 2 survives the MG hurricane. It would be a shame for this iconic title to go down this way.
Press Release:
BARC (TOCA) Limited – more widely known as ‘TOCA’ – is the rights holder to the British Touring Car Championship (‘BTCC’).
In May 2020, TOCA entered into an agreement with Motorsport Gaming US LLC – an entity more widely known as ‘Motorsport Games’.
That agreement exclusively licensed Motorsport Games to produce interactive video gaming products relating to the British Touring Car Championship.
It is with regret that TOCA now advise that it has been forced to terminate that agreement forthwith, due to ongoing fundamental breaches of the agreement by Motorsport Games. Having been given sufficient latitude to rectify those contractual breaches, unfortunately, Motorsport Games has failed to do so.
In order to protect the reputation and intellectual property of the BTCC, including those of its participants and partners, TOCA had been left with no option but to terminate the agreement and immediately withdraw all licensed BTCC rights that were provided to Motorsport Games under that agreement.
TOCA is aware that this news will come as a huge disappointment to our hundreds of thousands of fans, many of whom were eagerly anticipating the release of a new BTCC game… and we very much share that frustration, due to Motorsport Games being unable to fulfill its contractual commitments.
Official Webpages – motorsportgames.com – www.btcc.net
