Focus Entertainment will publish Clutch, the open-world racing game from Forza Horizon veterans Maverick Games, with the two companies announcing a major publishing partnership today that marks the publisher’s first move into the open-world racing space. Clutch is scheduled to release in Spring 2027 on PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC, and Focus says the shared ambition is to establish it as a major new racing IP.
Maverick Games was founded in 2022 by Mike Brown, the former creative director of Forza Horizon 5 and a lead designer on Forza Horizon 2, 3, and 4, and the Royal Leamington Spa studio is staffed with veterans from some of the genre’s biggest open-world racers. We covered Clutch’s reveal back in June, which came a few months after Amazon Games ended its original publishing agreement with the studio, so today’s news gives the game a publishing home again ahead of launch. “We founded Maverick Games to build the open-world racing experience we’d dreamed about for years,” said founder and CEO Mike Brown.
Clutch itself puts players inside the double life of a new generation of racing outsiders, competing at the highest level of professional motorsport by day before slipping into a dangerous underground world of racing, reputation, and pursuit by night. The story comes from Jamie Brittain, co-creator of Skins, and Maverick is pairing that character-driven, cinematic angle with deep vehicle customization that lets players express their style and shape their progression. It’s all set in Monaco and the French Riviera.
The Forza Horizon connection is front and center in the announcement itself, with Focus billing Clutch as the next open-world racer from Forza Horizon veterans. In my Forza Horizon 6 review, I said the game may not be the perfect racing game for me, but it’s damn close, and Clutch is coming from many of the people who helped build that series’ foundation. We’ll find out whether that pedigree carries over when it arrives in Spring 2027.
