After more than 30 years and two dozen games, it appears Need for Speed has reached the end of the road, taking with it one of the biggest publications in the car community.
Earlier this month, reports circulated that Speedhunters, a long-running car culture website, had been disbanded, prompting questions about the future of Need for Speed given the intertwined nature of the two.
Speedhunters photographer Matthew Everingham last week took to social media to clarify what took place, spelling bad news for the game franchise’s fans.
“Speedhunters is on ice. EA [Electronic Arts] shelved Need For Speed, and that means no more funding for the site,” Everingham said on Instagram.
Need for Speed dates back to 1994 with the release of ‘The Need for Speed’, initially for Panasonic’s 3DO console before becoming available for MS-DOS, Sony’s Playstation and the Sega Saturn.
While it started out with a focus on exotic cars in High Stakes (1999) and Hot Pursuit (2002), later tiles embraced the emerging tuner culture, highlighted in the high-watermark Underground (2003) and Underground 2 (2004), as well as Most Wanted (2005).
The franchise also dabbled in circuit racing with Prostreet (2007), Shift (2009) and Shift 2: Unleashed (2011), with the latter not only featuring most of the FIA’s GT championship cars, but also stars from the US Formula Drift series.
In 2014, a Need for Speed film was released as a loose adaptation of the franchise, starring Aaron Paul. It received mostly negative reviews.
Need for Speed returned to its popular tuning background with the release of an eponymously titled game in 2015, and has continued to focus on car modifications since, with the most recent installment being Unbound, released in 2022.
However, there have been no plans made for a successor to Unbound, while the majority of employees from its developer, Criterion Games, were moved to work on EA’s Battlefield franchise in recent years. EA won’t be providing further updates to Unbound.
Earlier this year, EA announced it would also no longer produce the official World Rally Championship video game, though it is still the producer of F1’s game series, something it acquired from Codemasters.
The potential demise of Need for Speed comes after former employees who worked on Microsoft’s Forza Motorsport series claimed it too has come to an end.
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