Rodgers left the studio in February to form indie startup Big Red Switch Games, a development studio that he says is working on "some cool game concepts".

Rodgers also confirmed to VideoGamer that his departure is not connected to today's wave of layoffs, which saw redundancies at Evolution, Guerrilla Cambridge and Sony London Studios.

His decision to leave was purely for personal reasons and he remains on good terms with Sony. DriveClub will continue development at Evolution without him.

However, with Rodgers out it isn't yet clear who will be leading development on Evolution's delayed PS4 racer in his place.

Earlier this month it was revealed that Sony had previously taken DriveClub "back to the drawing board", although the game is still technically due to launch in early 2014.

Sony claims that the development of DriveClub "will not be affected" by today's layoffs.