Dirt Rally 3 Reportedly Cancelled In Favour Of 'Ambitious' WRC Game

Under the EA name

by Ben Kerry Thu 24th Mar 2022

Not too long ago, the racing expects at Codemasters were picked up by EA. These days, the studio is known primarily for its F1, GRID and DIRT games, which will all come under the EA Sports brand in future. Or will they?

A new report from exputer (via Tom Henderson), says that Dirt may well be finished, for now. According to the report, Dirt Rally 3 was "scrapped in late 2021" and WRC will now fill that rallying gap for the racing studio.

This claim is further backed up by the fact that Dirt's Twitter page was changed to 'EASPORTSRally' last month, which does signal a change in focus for the developer.

To be honest, this all makes a lot of sense. Codemasters acquired the rights to develop WRC games a few years ago, starting in 2023. Dirt's 'Rally' offshoot is a realistic simulator compared to the main series, meaning it'd be rather similar to a WRC game.

Are you looking forward to Codemasters developing WRC titles? Or did you want more DIRT? Let us know below.

[source exputer.com]

Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin' in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he's not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that's far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.

1
ultraviolet
Thu 24th Mar 2022

Colin McRae Rally confirmed

😁

2
Zucaritas
Thu 24th Mar 2022

Sad that they got the WRC license, Kylotonn have been doing an excellent job with the last WRC games and Codies have been doing terrible with the yearly releases of the F1 games, hoping the rally team is way better than those lazy devs from the F1 games

3
awp69
Thu 24th Mar 2022

@Zucaritas I thought F1 2021 was a great game. Got very positive reviews as well. 85 on OpenCritic even.

4
Stocksy
Thu 24th Mar 2022

@awp69 exactly and don’t the WRC get a rather mixed review?

I was hoping we’d get a rally game that mixes WRC into a more Dirt style game with other races types as well. A sort of “Rally Motorsports” kind of thing…. With loads of different dirt racing.

5
Zucaritas
Thu 24th Mar 2022

@awp69 it is a good game but it's not worth it to buy day 1 every year. They release in the middle of the F1 season and incomplete, only the new cars are there on release day. No new tracks and F2 cars, those release in the following months via updates. Imagine if the FIFA games instead of September, released on January every year and with some leagues missing and you have to wait to April or may to play those missing teams and players, right when the season is already over.

6
JayJ
Thu 24th Mar 2022

Makes sense, Dirt Rally 2.0 was a massive disappointment, the original was better in many ways. Heck even Dirt 5 was really disappointing compared to Dirt 4. The series peaked, and I have no confidence in the new EA-ified Codemasters.

7
pip_muzz
Thu 24th Mar 2022

Interesting usage of the word "cancelled"!
I suspect the actuality of the situation is that Dirt Rally 3 was "replaced" by the acquisition of the WRC licence, with this bringing additional benefits to the Dirt Rally series as opposed to taking away.