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Focus Entertainment to Publish Maverick Games’ Clutch in Spring 2027
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Focus Entertainment has signed a publishing deal with Maverick Games for Clutch, the open-world racing game Amazon Games walked away from earlier this year. The agreement, announced August 24, 2026, sets a Spring 2027 release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and marks Focus’s first entry into open-world racing.
Maverick is the Leamington Spa studio founded in 2022 by veterans of Playground Games’ Forza Horizon team, led by founder and CEO Mike Brown, the former Forza Horizon creative director. Clutch is its debut title: a narrative-led racer with an original story from Jamie Brittain, co-creator of the TV series Skins, built around a driver competing in professional motorsport by day and an underground racing scene by night, with deep vehicle customisation.
“We founded Maverick Games to build the open-world racing experience we’d dreamed about for years,” Brown said in the announcement. “Focus shares our creative bar and our ambition for Clutch, and we can’t wait for players everywhere to discover this world.”
Vincent Chataignier, deputy chief executive officer of Focus Entertainment Publishing, said the publisher looks to back creators “redefining their genre,” describing Brown’s team as among “the defining creative voices in the racing genre.” The stated ambition is to establish Clutch as a major new racing IP.
From Amazon Games to Focus Entertainment
The deal closes a six-month search for a publishing partner. Maverick signed its original publishing agreement with Amazon Games in May 2024, while the project was still unannounced. Amazon released the studio from that agreement in February 2026, part of a broad retreat from game publishing that has seen the company cut most of its MMO development staff, wind down New World, cease operations on the recently released King of Meat, and sell the unreleased MOBA March of Giants to Ubisoft. Amazon Game Studios head Christoph Hartmann left the company in January 2026.
“As part of our strategic evolution to focus on projects that leverage Amazon’s unique strengths and scale, including the recent re-launch of Luna and our Tomb Raider franchise partnership with Crystal Dynamics, we have decided to release Maverick Games from their publishing agreement with Amazon Game Studios,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Game Business at the time, adding that the decision gave Maverick “the flexibility to find a publishing partner whose strategic priorities are better aligned with bringing their game to market.”
Brown and studio head Harinder Sangha said then that development of their debut title “continues to progress as strongly as planned” and that the studio was in active dialogue with partners. Clutch was formally revealed at Summer Game Fest in June 2026, where press got hands-on time with an early build, and the studio took the game to gamescom in August 2026 ahead of the Focus announcement.
The publishing handoff mirrors another recent unwinding of an Amazon Games deal: earlier this month the company handed Throne and Liberty’s Western publishing back to NCSoft, after previously folding its Luna cloud gaming service into Prime Video.
What Focus Entertainment Gets
For Focus, Clutch extends a publishing portfolio built on mid-to-large licensed and original titles into a genre it has not previously contested. Focus Entertainment Publishing is one of two publishing divisions of the Paris-listed PULLUP Entertainment group, alongside indie specialist Dotemu, with a catalogue that includes A Plague Tale, SnowRunner, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. The group also owns four development studios, among them Dovetail Games and Deck13.
In the regulated release filed for the deal, PULLUP Entertainment reported revenue of €281 million for its 2025/26 fiscal year across nearly 600 employees in Europe. Financial terms of the Maverick agreement were not part of the disclosure; the release describes it as a major publishing partnership without disclosing consideration.
The group has two dated events on its calendar before Clutch ships: its annual general meeting on September 23, 2026, and its Q2 2026/27 revenue report on October 22, 2026.
What Ships Next
Clutch is scheduled for Spring 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and is available to wishlist on Steam now. A more precise launch window has not been set.
