- Maverick Games confirms it still owns the rights to the intellectual property of its new open-world driving game since splitting from Amazon
- The studio’s AAA open-world driving game is in post-production, “content complete” and “fully playable”
- First in-engine screenshot released
Last week, Amazon Game Studios announced it is no longer publishing the new open-world driving game from Maverick Games.
Since then, the studio, made up of former Playground Games, Electronic Arts and Sumo Digital staff, has released a podcast addressing the split.
Maverick Games still owns IP rights following Amazon split
During the podcast, Co-Founder and Creative Director Mike Brown revealed that Amazon parted ways with Maverick in early December. This was then finalised just before Christmas.
Crucially, Maverick Games will still retain full rights to the intellectual property and assets following its split from Amazon, as development continues. This contrasts with other common publishing deals where the publisher owns rights to the IP.
“There are so many different types of publishing deals. One of the things that we all really wanted before we signed when we first started was that we appreciated how important our IP was to us,” said Maverick Games COO and Co-Founder, Harinder Sangha.
“It was something we wanted to make sure we retained, so it was never up for sale. It was one of the things we talked about with everyone back then.
“The fact that we’ve retained our IP means that we just carry on. Some great work has been done on the game since we’ve had that notice, and everyone has managed to carry on. Had we not had that, we would have had to down tools. We wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
“On the day that I found out, I was disappointed and upset for approximately 40 seconds before thinking [this is] probably actually pretty good for us,” added Brown.
Ex-Forza Horizon 5 Creative Director’s new open-world driving game enters post-production
While the studio’s debut project has yet to be announced, development is at an advanced stage. Before the split with Amazon was announced, the open-world driving game was already “content complete” and “playable end to end.”
“We now [find] ourselves in post-production, which is part of the project where we have a content complete, end-to-end game experience,” explained Brown. “We then polish it up and get it to the quality levels our players would expect from us.”
Work on the game’s announcement trailer has also begun. “I think that’s [the trailer] been a really nice exercise for the team. As much as you are content complete and fully playable, there are not that many elements of it that look really polished.”
Brown went on to reveal that the trailer isn’t ready to be shown yet because the team is waiting for licensing approvals from music artists and car manufacturers.
“The trailer has a music track in it, which we have not fully paid for the licensing on yet. It also includes a lot of cars,” he said.
“When you’re making a game like ours, and you’ve licensed a lot of cars, you’re using other people’s IP. If you’re using that in a marketing context, such as a trailer, then it’s typical to get approval.
“If we’re going to show a car doing a thing, they get to say, ‘yep, that’s cool.’ They almost always say yeah, because games, like the games that we make, make their cars look cool. But you could imagine an alternate scenario in an imagined game where those cars are used to do very bad things and violent crime or something like that.
“To drop the trailer would be to message a lot of car manufacturers and then wait on their approval process.”
First screenshot is in-engine and “looks that good when you’re playing”
First reported by The Game Business, news of the studio’s split with Amazon broke last week, which was earlier than Maverick Games planned. “Ideally, I think we would have waited a little bit longer because it would have been great to drop that news alongside a big game asset,” said Brown.
Instead of showing a trailer, the studio released a tantalising screenshot of a Porsche 718 Spyder and a Porsche 911 Turbo 930 parked in a scenic location.
According to Brown, getting approval from Porsche took just ten minutes at the end of a workday.
“Our contact over at Porsche said: ‘Yeah, we can do it. I do finish work in 10 minutes, though.’ And so this was at 5:20. We dropped that image with him at 5:27 along with two other images, which we didn’t publish yet,” he said.
Following speculation, Maverick Games confirmed that the screenshot is in-engine. “Let me assure [you] that is all our in-game assets. That is all in-engine – it looks that good when you’re playing,” said Executive Producer & Co-Founder at Maverick Games, Tom Butcher.
While showing an early cut of a presentation, Brown revealed that some people mistook the in-game footage for real-life. “There are parts where people thought it was like footage of actual cars. We didn’t have anything in there that’s like ‘pre-alpha footage’ or ‘all-representative game’ or ‘all in-engine,’” he said.
“Someone asked: ‘Is that car going to be in the game?’ I was like: ‘That is the car in the game. You’re looking at a clip from the game with it. That isn’t a video of real life.”
Featuring a narrative led by Skins co-creator Jamie Brittain, Maverick Games’ open-world driving game is set to release on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The Leamington Spa-based studio says it will share more about its debut driving title “later this year,” and is in “active dialogue with partners” as it seeks a new publisher.
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