News - Wreckreation Studio has put its entire staff on notice of redundancy, but still believes in its latest Burnout revival.

Three Fields Entertainment, the developers of Burnout-inspired arcade racer Wreckreation, have announced that their entire team has been put on notice of redundancy. According to an announcement from CEO Fiona Sperry, a former Criterion studio director, this comes as Three Fields finds itself without backing from Wreckreation's publisher THQ Nordic, having "had to self-fund most of this year". "Without the enthusiasm or financial support from our publisher to continue development, we simply cannot sustain the studio in its current form. Making this decision has been unbelievably painful," Sperry wrote in a message shared via the game's Twitter account. "This is a heartbreaking moment for all of us," she continued. "What makes it even harder is that we have so many things in the pipeline — multiple features, updates, and creative ideas that we were excited to bring to the game, many of which are showcased in the video we’re sharing today." The video, which you can watch via the tweet above, shows off a number of feature additions that I would be keen to see make it into Wreckreation. One is an "accident-black-spot" mode mirroring Burnout's iconic crash mode, in which you're given a junction and tasked with causing as costly a pile-up as possible. There's also a "tightrope mode" focusing on driving along very narrow airborne obstacle courses, the ability to add buildings to the map while in the game's live-build mode, and a range of construction vehicles and trucks you can drive around. Of all those, the crash mode is something I could genuinely see giving Wreckreation bounce-back potential, assuming BeamNG.Drive hasn't already filled that void in players' minds. The ability to essentially build your own towns could also go a long way toward addressing one of the game's biggest problems — its barren world space outside of player-built sky spaghetti. "My hope is that by showing this work publicly, someone out there might also see that potential and perhaps an opportunity could still emerge," Sperry wrote. "But even if that hope does not materialise, we want this to stand as a testament to our vision and to the strength, passion, and skill of our tiny team." As of writing, Three Fields still plan to deliver an update adding crossplay to Wreckreation before Christmas. All the news we report about game developers losing their jobs or being at risk of that sees us send our best to the folks affected, but I'm particularly sad to see Three Fields in this tough situation. That's largely because I really enjoyed the work Sperry, Alex Ward, and co did on Burnout and Need For Speed while at Criterion, with both those series either dormant or currently on hold. Both Wreckreation and 2019's Dangerous Driving had a chance to be Three Fields' big 'Burnout's back, baby' moments, conclusively proving to the suits at EA that locking the series in the attic of dormant entities was a hugely short-sighted move. Neither quite managed to stick the landing, though. In my hours playing both, I've never felt like that failure was down to them being cynical nostalgia-fests, attempts to cash in on the anarchic old arcade racers I and others fell in love with. Instead, and perhaps this is because I've gone in each time hoping I'll be blown away, the two games felt like the vision was solid, but the small studio just hadn't been able to nail the nuances of execution. They weren't a million miles off reigniting the magic of classic Burnout, with EA and Criterion's substantial resources behind it. They're still yet to get there, though. Here's hoping that another publisher willing to back Three Fields swoop in and, as always, solidarity to the studio's staff as they face an uncertain future.