Image via Microsoft

Playground Games, the Microsoft-owned studio responsible for the Forza Horizon and Legend franchises, has parted ways with co-founder and studio managing director Gavin Raeburn. Raeburn is being replaced past fellow co-founder Trevor Williams. In a statement, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Forza and Legend, Alan Hartman said, "we thank Gav for his leadership and contributions to the Forza franchise and wish him all the all-time."

No announcement has even so been made as to what Raeburn plans to do next, but if he is in fact retiring he leaves an impressive legacy in his wake. He began his games industry career in 1986 as a one-human studio, designing and developing a side-scrolling shoot-'em-up called Terminator (no relation to the moving-picture show of the aforementioned name). Pretty soon he was hired full-time by Codemasters and throughout the late 80s and early 90s worked on a wide variety of titles including Psycho Pinball and the infamous Rock Star Ate My Hamster.

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During that first decade, Raeburn produced only one racing game, 1989'south Rallycross Simulator, just in 1996 he shifted entirely to racing games, leading the development of ultra-realistic archetype, TOCA Touring Car Championship. The success of TOCA led to the development of Colin McRae Rally, and before long Codemasters had evolved into a studio specializing entirely in racing games, with TOCA and Colin McRae eventually condign the Grid and Dirt franchise respectively.

Raeburn left Codemasters to form Playground Games in 2022, and in the 12 years since has overseen the production of v hugely successful Forza Horizon games. Playground is currently working on updates to Forza Horizon 5 and the development of a new Legend game.