GTR3 encounters issues, official Discord closed

Uh-oh. Things are sounding pretty rocky over at Simbin Studios UK, developers of the upcoming racing game GTR3. In an update on its official Discord by Dylan Byrne, Community and Marketing Manager, the game is now going dark for the foreseeable future and won’t re-emerge until there are “real, hard facts – from day one.”

Does that insinuate that the original screenshots and announcement from February 2017 weren’t ‘real, hard facts’? We’ll let you decide, but erm, that doesn’t sound promising.

A direct sequel to Simbin’s highly regarded GTR 2 – FIA GT Racing Game, which was released on PC in 2006, the Swedish developer transmogrified into Sector 3 Studios after Race 07 to create the current free-to-play simulator RaceRoom.

Simbin Studios UK was a new subsidiary of the KW Automotive group, sitting alongside Sector 3 Studios, created to make the new GTR sequel. Even as recently as January this year, the team was hiring for a Technical Artist Role, but since the initial batch of images and information, things have gone very quiet.

That was until last year when an official Discord channel popped up, giving fans some hope. Even I started to wonder if there was actually going to be some news about the game.

Nope.

In an astonishing post this evening, the GTR3 Discord channel will close at 18:00 UCT this Friday, 26th March 2021.

“The drive to make GTR3 has always been real: we all want to make something worthy of the GTR name and that desire is still there. The development team has worked hard and made genuine progress. Unfortunately, a combination of issues has hindered delivery. The problems have been compounded by over-optimistic communications – but as gaming history shows us, optimism doesn’t deliver results,” says the post.

Staggering really. We are sad to hear this and we do hope that the project is able to come to fruition at some point. Confirmation that work will continue is included, but to what extent is unclear.

“Work on the project will continue behind the scenes. But from now on, there will be no more empty promises. No more optimistic statements. We know we’ve let you all down: not just once, but on more than one occasion over the years.

“The solid talent in Simbin Studios UK will be backed up by additional resources and a fresh plan. When we re-emerge from this self-imposed exile, it will only be with real, hard facts.”

If the project has indeed got fresh impetus behind it, then I agree it’s probably best to hide in the shadows until more concrete news, but it still puzzles me as to why the Discord was set up recently in the first place.

I guess for now I’ll continue to play RaceRoom as a suitable alternative. Will we ever see GTR3? Who knows, fingers crossed we do at some point. No one mention Duke Nukem Forever. For now, let us know your thoughts on social media.