Straight4 Announces Layoffs Following Negative Reception of Project Motor Racing

Announced on April 29 of this year, Project Motor Racing officially released on November 25 after months of hype and anticipation.

Fans of sim racing games seemed to have a lot to look forward to. As we've all seen in the gaming sphere before, sometimes hyped products turn out to not be worth anyone's time and that was unfortunately the case for Straight4's sim racer. As of right now, only 29% of the game's reviews are positive.

Anyone involved in the sim racing community has spoken at length about how the game has fallen flat, citing problems regarding the game's handling model, AI behavior, and performance issues.

On the same day as the game's release, Straight4 put out a statement that it has been listening to the community's feedback and that it should expect a roadmap of changes to come out.

Quote From Straight4 Studios

Today means a lot to us. Launching Project Motor Racing isn’t just releasing a game—it’s sharing something we’ve poured our hearts into for 3 long years. We care about this sim, and we care about your experience with it. You’ve been with us as we went on this journey together, and we want to acknowledge not only your feedback on this first day, but your passion and honesty. Behind the studio are people, and it hurts knowing we didn’t hit expectations on release.

So now, we’d like to take this moment to explain where we are, and what comes next.

In the months leading up to release, we pushed with the intention of gaining a higher level of fidelity and accuracy. At the time, we did not see (nor foresee) performance issues during our testing across platforms and different specs of machines. However, once everything came together, issues have arisen that have soured players’ experience of the sim. These are our issues to solve, and we want to be upfront about them and what we’re going to do.

Here’s where things stand:

• We’re seeing inconsistencies on lower-spec machines. Our AI runs the same physics you drive with, and the complexity of that system is something we are still tuning.
• Speaking of AI, you have shown us numerous issues in our AI’s awareness and behaviour. We want you to understand that we see this … in ways that our AI evidently doesn’t. We will be working hard on this for upcoming patches. We want this to be a top performer in the single player space as much as you do, and reports of specific instances of AI unreliability assist us in nailing down avenues of improvement. We don’t have a “make AI better” button, no one does, but we have no intention of settling for something that doesn’t give you the experience you want or deserve.
• Some of the planned improvements need to be done at engine-level, and this will take time. While we can make small adjustments, more structural fixes take longer, require testing, and will arrive steadily as we complete them.
• Patch 1.5 has already arrived across all platforms. It’s just the start.

But we want you to know this clearly:

We’re not backing away from these challenges. We’re facing them head-on.

This sim matters to us. And your experience matters to us.

What’s coming next

In the coming days, we’ll share:

• A full roadmap showing where we’re headed with performance updates and fixes that now begins with the 1.5 patch.
• Updates on Triple Screen, VR, and your most-requested community features.
• Details on several features many of you have asked about.

We’ve built this on a new generation of simulation technology, with AI on player-level physics, a deep handling model, and systems designed with longevity in mind. We’re still shaping it, still refining it, and we’ll keep doing that with you.

You’ve been vocal, passionate, honest—and we’re grateful for it, no matter how much it stings.

Your feedback is our guide. We hear you, and we’re committed to delivering the sim you expect.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

The PMR Team

Current Priority Issues

• We have reports of peripheral issues on PS5. We have submitted fixes and we will get it you as soon as possible.
• We are working to stabilize our online servers and they will remain under maintenance until this is completed.
• We are investigating some Xbox users unable to launch the software.

Discuss this news item in our forum or in Discord.

Three days later, Straight4 released a patch for the game that promised to fix a lot of issues with the game and improved support for additional hardware, but this wasn't enough to win everyone back. This all leads up to the company posting a statement on their Twitter (but not their website for some reason) that it is cutting the size of its team down.

Quote From Straight4 Studios

What do you think of the layoffs to Straight4 and the future of Project Motor Racing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.