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Seems to be the beginning of the end (well, that and being acquired by EA in the first place).

It's sad because they made some of my favourite racing games, starting all the way back in the TOCA days, but they've been in decline for some time. The last few DiRT and GRID games - two of my favourite racing series - have been very disappointing from a fan perspective. In fact, looking at the dates, it's been around a decade since they made a DiRT or GRID game that I put more than a few hours into before I grew tired of the repetition and shallowness. The last GRID I refunded in disgust, which is shocking given the first GRID was my favourite racing game for a long time and I was always singing its praises on these forums.

GRID's gone down a weird narrative campaign rabbit hole that no one asked for and DiRT is all flashy colours and style over substance. Both have tracks that are all short, repetitive, and/or literal copy/pastes, and the handling has become far too simplistic. They're just so corporate and bland, in comparison to the innovation, experimentation, variety, and fun that were the hallmarks of the first GRID or DiRTs 2 & 3.

The F1 series has been fairly reliable, but as with sport licences, once you've played one of them you've kind of played them all, because they're limited to the real F1's current cars and tracks. And since the foundation is already in place, pretty much any small EA dev can churn one out, so it'll be easy for EA to calculate whether future entries will generate enough revenue to justify the licence.