The momentum behind the new racing sim Rennsport has picked up pace, Hebecker revealing his future plans for the title as it enters a stage of closed beta testing.
One of the sim’s most contentious issues is its support of mods and digital ownership. With all thoughts of NFTs completely dismissed by Hebecker at an early stage (“It’s not a f*g NFT game,” he clearly stated), we were lucky enough to go hands-on with a couple of examples of the Competition Company-developed title’s modded tracks, with Hebecker revealing more on the possibilities Rennsport will present mod makers.
A commitment to modders
The question many sim racing enthusiasts have asked about Rennsport is how committed are the developers to implementing mods to the game.
“We [are opening] up the door for the community. We speak to the community, we have some of the community’s tech guys here. So we start[ed] developing the tools for Rennsport and for the modders,” said Hebecker in an interview with Traxion.GG.
So, as hinted at early in Rennsport’s development, modding is a clear and crucial part of the sim’s DNA. Creating a marketplace for modders was also mooted, with early promises the platform would be open to modding teams wishing to develop and sell their mods – both old and new.
“In the next step for the platform, it should be super easy for older mods and creators to market their things and then bring them into the system in a super easy way,” stated Hebecker.
This is an intriguing point; throwing up the possibility of popular mods being converted from the comparatively old Assetto Corsa over to the Unreal Engine 5-enhanced Rennsport. During the Rennsport Summit 2 we played through a couple of track mods called Pacific Shore and Fort Curva Hillclimb, albeit driving stock Rennsport content (the Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) and BMW M4 GT3).
Tools for the job
The two mods were integrated into the game seamlessly, in a way many players will have experienced in other sims like Assetto Corsa and rFactor 2, but Rennsport’s USP is the way it may form the basis for an integrated mod marketplace:
“So this is this is the overall strategy we have at Rennsport. The platform will allow – at a certain point when everything is ready – [for modders] to [use] our modding tools, so they really make it super easy to use existing mods,” explains Hebecker.
“All this stuff will be directly on our platform and it’s super easy to integrate into the game,” he concluded.
Hebecker hints here that modding in Rennsport may be actively encouraged thanks to bespoke modding tools readily available to the community. It’s a fresh take opposite to that of some modern sims, with titles such as iRacing and RaceRoom actively discouraging vehicle and track modders.
The prospect of some of your most beloved existing mods being converted to a modern sim is intriguing. The Fort Curva Hillclimb track we tested is already in Assetto Corsa, for example, representing a tangible glimpse of what upgraded mod content can look like in Rennsport.
A tantalising prospect indeed.
