EA-backed car culture site winds down, as Need for Speed ‘shelved’
Speedhunters is ‘on ice’ after nearly two decades; EA recently suggested NFS plans were on hold
EA-backed car culture site, Speedhunters, says it’s winding down operations after the publisher allegedly decided to “shelve” its Need for Speed series.
That’s according to photojournalist and longtime contributor Matthew Everingham, who posted on Instagram that the site was “on ice”, some 17 years after it was founded.
“Speedhunters is on ice. EA shelved Need For Speed, and that means no more funding for the site,” he wrote. “Grateful for everything — the trips, the stories, the lifelong mates.”
Speedhunters hasn’t been updated for several months, and its social media accounts were recently updated with blackout profile pictures. Its store is also offline.
The news follows a statement from EA itself earlier this year, which suggested that plans for a new Need for Speed game were on hold, as the current developer, Criterion, focuses on its work on the next Battlefield.
EA announced in September 2023 that Criterion had moved divisions within the company to work on the Battlefield franchise. However, at the time, it claimed that a core group would continue working on what’s next for Need for Speed.
Criterion is one of four internal EA studios building a connected Battlefield universe set in the modern day. It’s mainly focused on single-player content for the next series entry.
Need for Speed’s previous developer, Ghost Games, was restructured into a support studio in 2020, and renamed EA Gothenburg. As Ghost Games, it developed Need for Speed Payback (2017) and Need for Speed Heat (2019).
Criterion was responsible for the series’ most recent entry, 2022’s Need for Speed Unbound.
Recently acquired Codemasters, which supported the development of Unbound, recently announced it was pausing development of its famous rally titles.
