Slightly Mad’s own Ian Bell Speaks out on the Matter
Before the development of Project Cars, game studio Slightly Mad was met with an interesting proposition by EA. Speaking in a Q&A stream with SpotTheOzzie, the studio’s own Ian Bell talked about the about how a deal with the big publisher led to near destruction of the company.
At first, Bell talks about Project Cars 2, but then he delves into the subject of Need for Speed Shift and why the game never received a sequel. Apparently, there was a deal in place that seemingly sabotaged the project. It almost led to Slightly Mad’s technology falling into the hands of EA.
You can find Bell’s comments on the deal below:
“We made a game called Need for Speed: Shift, we made a game called Shift 2 and EA came to me and said <<We’ll give you 1.5 million if you agree not to talk to any other publisher, to agree any other games or work on any other arrangement with any other publisher. And we’ll give you 1.5 million and we’ll sign Shift 3>>. So I said OK. That sounds like a good deal. I took the 1.5 million, I paid the guys, lots of bonuses, and two weeks before we were due to start Shift 3 it was canceled. With no warning. They said: ‘We are not doing that anymore.’
“We were in trouble, we had nothing left. We were done. They literally destroyed our company. They tried to kill us, they tried to steal our technology as well. They tried to f*ck us over, there is no other way to put it. That’s what they tried to do. And we have no love for EA and this company.”
Fortunately, the studio is not dead. According to reports, they’re working on a Fast and Furious game as we speak. So, there’s definitely life in these developers, and it’s good to know they weren’t destroyed by bureaucracy. However, I think we can all agree that Slightly Mad is actually very mad at what EA did.
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Happy gaming.