GTR dev threatens legal action against Need For Speed: Shift team

There's some bad blood in the sim racing world. The recent announcement that Need For Speed: Shift was being worked on by Slightly Mad Studios, which, according to the release, "includes developers and designers that worked on ... GT Legends and GTR 2," may have seemed innocuous enough. But it's led to the threat of legal action from SimBin, the company credited with making those games.

In an email we received recently, Magnus Ling, Executive Vice President at SimBin Studios AB said his company "is taking legal advice and considering to also take legal actions against Slightly Mad Studios, as a result of certain statements made by Slightly Mad Studios that we find to be incorrect, misleading and has a negative impact on our reputation as well as business negotiations."

When asked about the statement, Slightly Mad Studios boss Ian Bell was quick to respond, calling the assertions "absurd" and saying "more than 25 of Slightly Mad Studios' current staff worked on and are actually credited in GT Legends and GTR2 including the majority of the core development team ... It saddens me when fellow developers make inappropriate statements like this in public but I think the fact that the first I heard of it was from you says everything you need to know about the credibility of the claims. Had there been any merit to them I am sure I would have heard sooner."

Ling declined to comment further for the story until SimBin "finished reviewing the case together with [its] solicitors" and Need For Speed publisher EA has not yet commented. Regardless, this doesn't seem like it's over by a long shot. We'll let you know what we hear.