Racenet and The Clubs No More.

A long seven years, and only seven years it will be. That is the final decision coming from Electronic Arts as the process of winding down the service at the core of DiRT Rally 2.0's online gameplay will happen come July. The Racenet service in regards to DR 2.0 is being shut down, and puts the leagues and clubs that still use the game over the more recent EA Sports WRC in a position that they shouldn't be at in the first place.

This is Electronic Arts we are talking about of course. The company that is set to be bought by a consortium of investment groups at the cost of 55 Billion dollars; included in those investors is the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners owned by Jared Kushner, son-in-law to current fascist leader of the United States Donald Trump. In the most pragmatic sense, keeping a row of servers active that has their load and demand be the upkeep and creation of spreadsheets which hold all the data for the stages, rallies, and championships that take place on DR 2.0 is something that is a fraction of a fractions of a fraction of a percent of a company-wide server upkeep cost. It's an expenditure that nobody should notice if it's being created or not but within the context of a hyper-capitalist gaming company like EA. the lack of potential revenue to compensate is something that would be noticeable in context for investors within the company.

They, and other major players within the gaming industry, want you to be playing the games that can continue to make revenue for them and in part do this by preventing you from playing or owning older games that you still want to play. The problem comes in as more current products don't produce the experiences that older games did provide, as well as not everybody has the hardware capabilities to keep up with ever increasing requirements or the financial means to keep up with those demands. Have you seen the price of RAM or SSDs lately, and why it got to be that expensive?

For DiRT Rally 2.0 and EA Sports WRC, the differences are those hardware requirements primarily before going into relative game feel and some of the rallies that one may have over the other. Hardware requirements are a form of accessibility itself, and DR 2.0 remains ideal as it's perfectly serviceable on previous generation game consoles and older PCs that haven't been updated with the cross-platform nature of the clubs removing barriers along the way. It will remain a tough sell for those still playing DR 2.0 to move on if they don't have modern PC hardware or current generation games console, especially as the cost of a Playstation 5 has failed to drop since launch and has instead increased in some markets. Some clubs and groups will move on and transition to EA Sports WRC as their core group of players may already have both games but prefer the older title, others are at a crossroads of their very existence if that's simply not an option.

Rallying at it's core is a community as much as it is a motor sport. It's a group of like-minded individuals doing something that is hard to believe is legal in the first place: being able to drive harrowing backroads at unbelievable speeds on an adventure unlike any other, and sometimes with the added potential dangers of spectators roadside. It's remarkable to think that this form of racing wasn't outlawed in the wake of the 1955 Le Mans Disaster, but we still are able to do it both in the real and virtual world and enjoy the most human form of racing there is. Though I bemoan the loss of that human condition in modern rally offerings, largely brought on by the obsession of world records and mindless time trailing in the original DiRT Rally, the communities that play these games are what bring back that human condition. Someone has to win yes, but that's just one story in a event telling countless stories.

Each person that does a rally within these clubs and leagues, regardless of the game of choice, is telling a story all their own. Each person is on an adventure and these communities are giving people a place to share these stories and journeys without the potential for malice and disdain from the more obvious person vs. person conflict that defines more contemporary racing. That asynchronous nature of Racenet Clubs, allowing people to do the stages and rallies on their own time, allows people to build their own stories and goals on their own time and challenge themselves on their terms. Fellow competitors can see and believe those challenges as the events progress, and allows personal achievements and accomplishments to shine where even finishing the rally will be an accomplishment. That will always be the beauty of rallying; where the journey and the destination both matter and these leagues allow people from the comfort of their own home to experience that. They are the perfect medium to bring people together to enjoy one of the most incredible forms of racing there is, and Racenet Clubs will always be a thing of beauty in terms of what they can foster in communities that can grow beyond how they were initially created.

But a situation like this, where the writing is on the wall of what created that emotional connection is going away, shows how much the emotional joy that these games create well beyond their time for players does not align with that forever desire for capital from those who profit off these games. Those who race in these clubs are playing a video game well beyond an expected time frame for maximum profitability, and gaming companies see this as a problem that in their eyes does need to be remedied with a new title and new influx of capital to replace the older title. The problem here is that EA Sports WRC doesn't fill that hole the way that was hoped by Electronic Arts, and it's a hard sell to expect Assetto Corsa Rally to do the same in lieu of it's absurd performance requirements. Thousands of people who still play DiRT Rally 2.0 regularly are being left in the cold because there isn't laws preventing publishers from killing games whenever they feel like.

DiRT Rally 2.0, and the people who still play and enjoy it, deserve better than this. It remains a more populated game than EA Sports WRC at least on Steam, though it's single player that will remain active leaves so much to be desired in comparison to it's newer counterpart. The rest of it's multiplayer component will remain active however, meaning it's still the rare place where people can race rallycross as it's meant to be on game consoles or outside of iRacing on PC. While other realistic racing game titles now have the capability to have third-party services for matchmaking and results tracking, it remains to be seen what will be made possible for a title who's official support for it's defining feature is officially on life support. It's hard to expect that a product under the tutelage of a company like Electronic Arts will be given a second chance to shine when they aren't making money for the privilege. Paired with EA leaving Codemasters to a life of just making the yearly Formula 1 game, it is a sad denouement to what has been a brilliant boom period for rallying video games.

Of course, Richard Burns Rallying will always be here welcoming all comers to experience rallying as close to the real human experience as possible in the virtual world. It's not like it's performance requirements are absurd either, and if you want to run in virtual reality it is more than up to the task. There is still the matter of leaving console players behind with RBR, something that should never be done with DiRT Rally's success on consoles and the scope of the communities that were created in it's wake. Though EA would rather abandon everyone and leave seven years of joy to be but a memory and leave those communities, friendships, and relationships to potentially wither though no fault of their own.