Straight4 Studios has broken a long spell of silence on the development of the upcoming GTRevival title, revealing that the game has a new name, new publisher, and a slightly different logo.
Things have been a little quiet on the GTRevival front over recent months, leading players to wonder if it would hit the lightly penciled-in, late-2024 launch date. While that does now look to be unlikely, there’s potentially some renewed optimism for the title generally courtesy of a new publisher.
The game, then called GTR Revival before a contraction likely related to Sector3’s claims on the GTR name, was announced last year as being published by Plaion — which owns Milestone, the developer of several motorbike sims and Hot Wheels Unleashed.
However Plaion’s parent company, the Embracer Group, almost immediately fell into strife thereafter, following the collapse of a $2bn partnership deal. Ever since then it’s being laying off staff and selling its studios and subsidiaries, placing Straight4’s title in a void of uncertainty.
The developer’s corresponding radio silence has been down to the fact that it’s been in negotiations with a new publisher for the title: GIANTS Software.
GIANTS is the developer-turned publisher of the leading vehicle simulator in its field, and we mean that quite literally. It’s the brand behind the now 16-year old Farming Simulator series which — as the name might suggest — gives you the simulated life of a farmer, including officially licensed vehicles like tractors and combine harvesters.
With the new partnership comes the new name of “Project Motor Racing“, and you’d be forgiven for drawing a straight line from Bell’s most recent titles in the genre in the Project CARS series. That certainly seems to be intended, although Straight4 comments that the new name “will make a lot more sense” after Gamescom at the end of August.
In addition to that intriguing promise, the studio will restart its newsletter from August — on hiatus due to the negotiations with GIANTS — as well as expanding its social media presence over the coming months.
The new partnership and new name haven’t impacted on development, with the Straight4 team rebuilding the game on a new physics engine after stepping away from Unreal Engine 5 — as revealed earlier in the year — in order to better support VR.
Although we may not see the title released in 2024, the press release notes that GIANTS has “signed-off on … the most ambitious “early access” program ever seen in sim racing” and flags the fact that October will mark 20 years since Bell’s original team launched the GTR mod. Chances are then that we may see something before the end of the year…
See more articles on GTR Revival and Project Motor Racing.
