BTCC video game cancelled as licence terminated | GRR
TOCA, the rights holder to the British Touring Car Championship, has today (6th November) announced that it has terminated its agreement with Motorsport Gaming US LLC – commonly known as Motorsport Games – with immediate effect.
The agreement dates back to May 2020 with Motorsport Games being given an exclusive licence to produce ‘interactive video gaming products relating to the British Touring Car Championship’. In layman’s terms, a new official BTCC game.
The game was originally due to land in 2022, but due to ongoing delays was pushed back to an expected release in 2024. Today, though, TOCA has announced that it has been forced to terminate the agreement forthwith, citing ‘ongoing fundamental breaches of the agreement’ as its reason to do so, despite opportunities to rectify said breaches.
A statement produced via the BTCC’s official website said: “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 awaiting the release of a new BTCC game… and we very much share that frustration, due to Motorsport Games being unable to fulfil its contractual commitments.”
The announcement of the agreement’s termination comes just days after it was announced that some 40% of Motorsport Games’ workforce was being laid off, putting future projects in doubt.
Motorsport Games currently holds the licences for upcoming games based on IndyCar and the FIA World Endurance Championship, both of which were originally expected to be released in 2023, although the IndyCar offering had already been delayed until 2024.
The Floridian games producer were also behind the ill-fated 2023 running of the Virtual Le Mans, which suffered a multitude of connectivity issues and was labelled a ‘clown show’ by recently-crowned triple Formula One World Champion Max Verstappen, who was competing in the event.