A Southam-based racing games studio founded by the Darling brothers in 1986, now part of EA Sports and home of the F1 games.
Codemasters is a British racing games company based in Southam, Warwickshire, and part of Electronic Arts (EA), run under EA Sports. It is known for the Colin McRae Rally and Dirt series, GRID, Micro Machines and the official F1 games. Its Birmingham studio focuses on EA Sports F1, and the Southam site also supports other EA projects such as EA Sports FC.
We did not find a current mission statement in the pages we read. The company has long been known for high-quality, accessible games, from budget titles in the 1980s to realistic racing today. The company started by making budget games and used freelance developers to produce games of near full-price quality. Its Dizzy games were popular on 8-bit computers, and it also made most of the unlicensed NES games published by Camerica.
Brothers Richard and David Darling founded Codemasters in October 1986 in Banbury, with help from their father. Their first game was BMX Simulator. In the early 1990s it grew with Micro Machines and developed the Game Genie cheat cartridge. It listed on the London AIM market in 2018, bought Slightly Mad Studios in 2019, and joined EA in 2021, at which point it had around 700 staff. In 2022 its Cheshire studio was merged into Criterion Games. Layoffs came in December 2023, and in May 2025 EA paused rally game development and cancelled the WRC sequel, reducing some roles and redeploying others. The founders sold their stake in the earlier publisher Mastertronic in March 1986 to become independent, and the company moved into full-price 16-bit games with Micro Machines and Pete Sampras Tennis on the Sega Mega Drive. A venture investor bought out the founders in 2007.
Public sources tell us little about daily culture, so we make no claims about it. Because the company has changed a lot in recent years, ask about team structure and plans when you speak to staff. The company's Birmingham studio gives it a city base as well as the Southam headquarters.
A studio of this kind employs programmers, vehicle and environment artists, animators, designers, audio staff, producers, data and online staff and testers. If you love cars and motorsport, learning a game engine, physics and maths, and building small driving projects can help you stand out.
Website: www.codemasters.com
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