Slightly Mad Studios: Founder criticizes EA after the end of Project CARS

Slightly Mad Studios Founder Slams Electronic Arts After Project CARS Game Series End

Publisher Electronic Arts announced yesterday that the racing game series Project CARS will be discontinued. There will be no further investments in the series from developer Slightly Mad Studios.

If possible, the employees involved in the series should find a new position in the publisher’s other studios.

Ian Bell is not at all happy about this news. The founder and former CEO of Slightly Mad retired last October after the studio’s future was secured when Codemasters was acquired by EA.

Now Bell has criticized the publisher for his latest decision. In a series of tweets, he said:

“EA keep up the amazing work… I’ve said my part and I stand by every word as they continue to prove it.”

“What do the numbers (sorry, I mean people, with hopes, dreams and families) look like at the bottom of these tables?”

Bell hasn’t been on good terms with EA in the past. So at that time the development of Shift 3 never materialized and the studio seemed at the end because the publisher had not kept his promises, as he claims.

“We had made a game called Need for Speed: Shift, we had made a game called Shift 2, and EA came to me and said two months after Shift 2 we can give you 1.5 million if you agree with it not to talk to another publisher, agree on other games or work on another agreement with another publisher and we’ll give you 1.5 million and we’ll sign Shift 3?”

“So I said, OK, that sounds like a good deal. I took the 1.5 million, paid the guys lots of bonuses, and two weeks before we were supposed to start Shift 3, they canceled it without warning. They said, ‘We don’t do that anymore’.”

“They sent emails to three, four, five of our key employees. And two of them actually left because we were in trouble. We had nothing. We were done. They literally destroyed our company, they tried to kill us and they also tried to steal our technology.”

“They tried to screw us, there’s no other way to put it. That’s what they tried. They tried to destroy us and we have no love for EA in this company. So yeah, I mortgaged my house, I put the money on the table, I put it into the company, I paid the staff for three more months, we played a few games and we slogged along.”

“These guys are assholes. We have no respect for EA. I will never do a deal with them again, no respect for them, they are horrible human beings, they are corporate monsters.”

The Project CARS series came to three racing games. There will no longer be a fourth part.

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