Speedhunters Seems Dead, And It's A Loss For Us All

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Speedhunters, nan car civilization tract that ever put retired immoderate of nan champion photography and astir engaging stories successful nan business, seems to beryllium dead. Its last article was published connected April 8, its last Instagram post went up connected March 17 and its last Facebook post was only a fewer days later connected March 26 (the tract hasn't touched Twitter successful years). Its contributors, according to Caleb Jacobs complete astatine The Drive, opportunity nan extremity is here. It's a damn shame. 

Speedhunters began arsenic a profoundly weird project, a measurement for Electronic Arts — publishers of nan "Need for Speed" bid — to get its ft successful nan doorway pinch car culture. EA backed Rod Chong, a imaginative head who worked connected "Need for Speed," with nan money basal to spell retired and find automotive talent. Not drivers aliases builders, but writers and photographers who would themselves find nan builds, nan races, nan shows, and nan stories. For complete 15 years, nan strategy worked — Speedhunters was ever afloat of gorgeous photos and absorbing stories, and it shone a ray connected group who whitethorn not person gotten nan aforesaid attraction elsewhere.

Speedhunters

To fto you each successful connected immoderate wrong shot from nan car penning world — you'll cognize each this if you activity successful media, you won't if you don't — location are a batch of types of communicative that a tract aliases mag tin publish. There are breaking news stories, SEO content, reviews, each sorts. Most prized among them, though, is nan feature. Features are long, they're time-consuming to constitute and edit, they often require resources to make them activity — level tickets, state money, arena entries, moreover conscionable paying a writer for nan clip they walk moving connected 1 agelong communicative alternatively of a wide of quick-hit posts.

Features are nan stories that readers remember, that writers are proud of, but they're an endangered type arsenic media is progressively gobbled up by backstage equity pinch a single-minded attraction connected quarterly profits astatine nan disbursal of each else, features get harder and harder to justify. No 1 tin get nan finance from guidance to activity retired large stories, nary 1 tin return nan clip to constitute and edit them. Except, of course, for Speedhunters. From 2008 to 2025, astir of what Speedhunters published were true, honest-to-god characteristic stories. EA's backing gave nan tract nan costs and nan breathing room to activity retired nan champion of nan automotive world, and radiance its perfectly photo-ready ray connected nan dim corners of car enthusiasm that could do pinch immoderate illumination. 

Maybe, then, it shouldn't beryllium astonishing that Speedhunters is gone. The profit-hungry next-fiscal-quarter-at-all-costs mindset that has ruined truthful overmuch of nan net — a mindset Jalopnik is each excessively acquainted with — has dispersed acold and wide, infecting industries to their very roots. The video games manufacture has seen this for years, arsenic cancellations and layoffs get ever much ruthless — including astatine EA, which has cut hundreds of workers this twelvemonth alone. The conditions nether which Speedhunters was founded, wherever companies would walk connected subjects that could connection semipermanent gains alternatively than contiguous profits, nary longer exist. 

Speedhunters gets overmuch of nan in installments for nan fame of RWB and Akira Nakai successful nan United States. It's wherever galore folks first saw nan activity of Larry Chen. On some sides of nan camera aliases keyboard, Speedhunters introduced group to beautiful parts of nan automotive world — and, crucially, introduced those parts of nan automotive world to group who would spell connected to go supporters and fans. There are still outlets pinch that liking successful nan places different outlets aren't looking — you're reference this connected Jalopnik, aft each — but nan nonaccomplishment of Speedhunters, and what it could do pinch nan resources it had, is genuinely a rustle to nan car-loving world.