I've been worried for a while - not because it's a new engine (which is obviously a worry), but because their rebrand of the studio (Sports Interactive) and
the communications they've been putting out there absolutely stink of a highly-paid consultancy takeover-and-destroy (which I see all the time in my day-job).
There's been a lot of stuff on social media about their studio makeover that's made me go "oh Christ no, they've never done 'corporate bullshit' before and suddenly there's a rebrand, a new logo that's just the old one, a
Sports Interactive website with an '
about our brand' section (who the fuck cares, you're not a fashion house, it's so cringeworthy) and buzz-phrases like '
we're true to the game' (expensive, meaningless drivel), along with an
Instagram page full of photos of the team giving speeches, winning awards and other stock-photo-like imagery of everyone having fun at work"...
Whenever a company does this, it's so transparent / desperate, and it absolutely stinks of a well-paid consultancy or an agency coming in and charging hundreds of thousands of pounds to deliver absolutely nothing of worth to the consumer at the end of it all (in-fact having the opposite effect, often tying the hands of those who previously had freedom to work but now have to cope with not only a new engine, but new middle-managers who simply put up roadblocks in the road to getting shit done).