Assetto Corsa EVO open to supporting mods in a “more creative way” than the series’ original

A lot can happen in 10 years. Three new Star Wars movies, over 51 billion streams of The Weeknd on Spotify and even a pandemic.

During that time, many sim racers were consistently playing one title – the first Assetto Corsa. Heck, there was even a popular spin-off Assetto Corsa, Competizione, in the meantime, but the progenitor was still as well-played as ever.

In fact, it broke its concurrent (PC) player record earlier this year. Remember, version 1.0 was released way back in December 2014.

Aside from offering genre-defining vehicle handling, it also allowed for community-created mods. Fan-fashioned cars, tracks, graphical enhancements and even weather contribute to its enduring appeal.

Google it, and all of the above, plus more, are available somewhere to install for the venerable platform.

For the Kunos Simulazioni team tasked with creating the third driving title in the series, the imminent Assetto Corsa EVO, the question of mod support has yet to be covered. Until now.

“We are working on our completely new technology that is created in-house for EVO and development is not over yet,” explains Co-founder and Executive Manager Marco Massarutto to Traxion.

“Possibly we may create a light editor like we did for the original Assetto Corsa so that people can contribute to content creation.

“Modding is definitely one of the open topics on the table, but no decision has been made yet.

“At the moment, we are focused on creating the [EVO] game itself.”

Sounds promising for the legions of passionate mod divisors. However, the Italian studio is keen to avoid some of the results seen for the over-a-decade-old predecessor.

“What we want to prevent this time is abuses in how some Assetto Corsa modding is being used, because we don’t like to see stolen content from different sims.

“The vision behind modding is that it should let people express their talent and create their own content.

“When someone grabs content from another game using third-party tools and they just put in the game or they sell it on third-party websites, it’s far against the vision we have for it. We believe that it also gives a bad perception of those people who spend a lot of time creating original content.

“This time, we want to see how we can support the good modders in a way that can create a synergy between the studio and the most talented creators.”

In other words, then, working more closely with the community to avoid anything that is legally dubious or takes away from the fun of creation. 

What form that will finally take is still an unknown. While it sounds as if some changes to the process are expected for Assetto Corsa EVO – which can be added to wishlists on Steam presently – content made by people outside of the 35-person Kunos team is set to remain intrinsic to its long-term appeal.

“We thank the community for the huge job they did with Assetto Corsa and we know that part of the franchise’s success is due to the visibility and the content creation from the beautiful community of modders.

“We want to work with them in a more creative way in the future. We are currently defining a strategy to do that in the proper way.”