Grid And DiRT Will Live On Despite Job Cuts

Publisher Codemasters has kept quiet about the development of its latest DiRT game ever since announcing in 2012 that DiRT Showdown is not considered a main title of the racing series, and DiRT 4 would be in the works for 2014. Over the last few years we have only been fed enough information to keep our hopes alive primarily with posts to social media.

DiRT fans became sceptical of the game’s vitality recently when Codemasters revealed that it’s laying off up to 50 members of its staff. The cuts will primarily take place in the Southam, Warwickshire office whose projects include both the Grid and DiRT games. Of course, this announcement led to an avalanche of misleading rumours that the games would not continue.

The staff members are being dismissed for redundancy in positions where the work can be performed by someone else in addition to their existing role.

This doesn’t exactly mean that DiRT 4 will not be completed. In fact, the positions in jeopardy are primarily in the field of design and art, but the work will continue in the hands of someone else. Programmers are unaffected by the cuts, and as many as 20 positions are being added worldwide as Codemasters expands its workforce in other areas of production.

True, it will take a little more time to sort out everyone’s roles and get things running smoothly again in the Southam office, but we should still expect to hear an official DiRT 4 announcement before this summer. The next Grid game could take longer since its latest release was only last year, but developers say to expect something amazing.

How does the future of DiRT 4 look? What we know from developers’ confirmations is that DiRT 4 will be much more rally oriented than its predecessors, and it will pay tribute to its roots by reflecting the style of Colin McRae: DiRT, the game from which the DiRT series originated. Codemasters has been developing a new physics engine and is looking to put all its 2015 games on next-gen consoles. An early access period is something the developers had hoped to bring in the first half of this year, so we will keep our fingers crossed.

While the studios get their work sorted out, let’s hear what you think about the DiRT series. Where should it be taken to from here?