Bad news: EA’s put the WRC series on ‘pause’ as the license agreement ends

There’s no way to soften the blow: the fantastic Codemasters-developed EA WRC game is no more. That’s according to an announcement from the studio shared via social media.

“Every great journey eventually finds its finish line,” it said.

It goes on to specify that the Hard Chargers pack will be EA WRC’s final DLC, after two years of post-launch support and many free content updates along the way. The game will continue to be available to players, but if you were hoping for a 2025 season update, those dreams have been dashed.

The lineage of Codemasters rally titles goes all the way back to Colin McRae Rally in 1998, and over those intervening 27 years the studio established itself as the absolute maestro of loose surface racing games.

The series renamed itself Colin McRae: Dirt in 2007 as it made its debut on the new PlayStation 3, and despite leaning heavily into energy drink imagery and totally rad dudes in backwards caps talking constantly at you between races, the driving felt consistently gratifying. Meaty, slippery, and with sickening impact when you got it wrong over that very tight left two that tightened.

While Dirt continued as a spinoff that focused increasingly on arcade thrills, fireworks, and Ken Block-style Gymkhana driving, the sim-minded side of the series returned in fine form with 2015’s Dirt Rally.

The Dirt games have gone quiet since 2020 after EA’s acquisition of Codemasters, but 2023’s WRC raised the bar yet again with incredibly vast stages packed with lush scenery, and a handling model that took the quintessential Dirt Rally sensation and smoothed off the sharper angles for marginally more accessibility.

So what now for sim rally drivers? Well, at least the 21-year-old Richard Burns Rally is still being modded and updated by its community, so you can play the 2025 WRC season there instead. Still, not quite the same, is it?