Nacon Has Regained The Rights To The WRC Game Franchise

Last month, we heard that EA-owned studio Codemasters’ deal to produce the official games of the World Rally Championship had ended early after just one title, EA Sports WRC, with Codies’ non-F1 racing game team potentially being disbanded altogether.

At the time, the WRC itself promised that its official games would be going in “an ambitious new direction,” and now we know who’ll be attempting to take them in that direction: the WRC game publishing rights have returned to Nacon, on an initial six-year deal running from 2027 to 2032.

The French publisher oversaw the release of every official WRC game between 2013’s WRC 4 and 2022’s WRC Generations, most of which were developed by fellow French outfit Kylotonn, which became a Nacon subsidiary in 2018.

It seems highly likely, then, that development of the WRC games will return to the studio, specifically through its racing game-specific KT Racing wing. KT developed seven successive WRC games, and while they steadily improved over the years, they were met with some criticism for often being repetitive in terms of both content and gameplay, and not delivering enough of an annual leap.

Hopefully, that won’t be the case when Nacon resumes publishing the games from 2027, because the WRC’s press release promises that “This project represents a complete reboot of the franchise, based on an entirely fresh vision, and marks an ambitious new chapter in the brand’s development.”

In addition to its run of WRC games, other KT Racing-developed titles have included the first two entries in the TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge series of superbike racing sims, and more recently, the somewhat troubled Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown.

The developer is also currently working on Endurance Motorsport Series, an intriguing motorsport sim that’s set to blend both racing and management elements. It won’t be until the year after next that we get the first of the renewed partnership’s WRC games, though, meaning that there’ll be no official tie-in games for the 2025 or ’26 seasons.