Maverick Games Is About to Reveal Its Open World Driver

Today is the day. After years of silence, a studio built by some of the most experienced open world racing developers in the industry is finally showing what they have been making.

Maverick Games was founded in 2022 by Mike Brown, the former creative director of Forza Horizon 5, alongside other senior veterans from Playground Games who collectively spent decades building the Forza Horizon series. The studio set up in Leamington Spa, the same area of England where Playground Games has long been based, and started building a debut AAA open world driving game with Amazon Games as the original publisher.

That publishing deal ended in February 2026. Amazon walked away from the project, but Maverick Games confirmed immediately that development was continuing, that they retained full intellectual property rights to the game, and that they were in active conversations with new partners. Within weeks, the studio revealed the game was content complete and fully playable, with post-production and the reveal trailer already underway.

The countdown has been running on a YouTube livestream for days, featuring a video feed of a 2003 Fiat Multipla parked in the studio lobby, a deliberately absurd choice that the team leaned into across social media with the kind of self-aware humour that suggests confidence in what they are actually about to show.

The reveal drops at 11am BST on June 2, 2026, timed to land before Sony's State of Play later the same day, during the same week as Summer Game Fest and the Xbox Games Showcase. Choosing that window is a statement about where Maverick Games sees their game sitting in the industry conversation.

What the Clues Point To

The first in-engine screenshot released after the Amazon split showed two Porsches, a 718 Spyder and a classic 911 Turbo 930, parked on cobblestone streets with a seafront visible in the background. The coastal European setting immediately drew comparisons to the French Riviera and to the fictional setting of Forza Horizon 2, which Brown also worked on as a game designer. The cars featured aftermarket wheels and a custom bonnet, hinting at vehicle customisation being part of the experience.

The studio's own description of the project calls it an open world action driving game with a narrative-led structure. That framing, action driving rather than racing, suggests something closer to the free-roaming festival structure of Horizon than to a competitive racing game. The narrative element is the part nobody has explained yet. How story and open world driving fit together is the question the reveal needs to answer.

The game is in development for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S. No release date has been announced. Given that the studio described the game as content complete in March 2026, a 2026 release is possible, though a 2027 launch remains the more cautious expectation for a game still without a confirmed publisher.

The trailer is live in hours. Everything else becomes clearer today.