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It is 13 days since Assetto Corsa EVO was released into early access, and presently, there is no way for every player to experience the latest driving simulator as intended.
Games released in this fashion are clearly stated as a work in progress. There isn’t the expectation that they are even close to being finished, but rather the community can provide feedback to developers and enjoy the nascent stages at a reduced price.
However, touting features in a title, even in early access, and not delivering those due to a required server connection that was not telegraphed pre-launch is the nadir for the highly respected development team at Kunos Simulazioni.
When things are, hopefully, patched up and several new cars, tracks and features have been implemented months from now, all of this may be forgotten. It’s far from over, and EVO could still be the sim racing success story of 2025.
But, one of the most anticipated virtual driving experiences of the year is already on the back foot.
Mud sticks, and time after time, a rough start sets a negative perception that proliferates social media – just look at EA SPORTS F1 24 and Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. For some, no amount of patching can assuage them following disastrous launch periods.
In the fullness of time, there will likely be an internal investigation, fingers pointed, points considered.
Presently, however, it feels like EVO’s bungled launch was an act of desperation.
Kunos is owned by its publisher, 505 Games, which in turn is part of Digital Bros – a publicly listed Italian video game company, also responsible for Ghostrunner and the PC port of Death Stranding, to name a few.
It’s this latter company that is required to publish financial reports, and here we can find why EVO has to succeed.
“The net revenue for the Premium Games operating segment as of September 30th, 2024 was at Euro 17 million, a 13% [increase] from the previous fiscal year and representing 79.1% of total revenue,” claims Digital Bros interim financial report covering July to September 2024.
“This result was spread among several back catalogue products, with the outstanding performance of the different versions of Assetto Corsa.
“The franchise developed by the fully owned studio Kunos Simulazioni generated Euro 5.8 million revenue in the reporting period.”
Between those three months, Assetto Corsa accounted for 34% of all ‘premium games’ revenue, with that segment responsible for just under 80% of all earnings.
In other words – the entire Digital Bros company is relying on EVO to be a blockbuster success.
This is reinforced by the outfit’s financial year 2023/2024 results (Digital Bros runs from 1st July to 30th June for its reporting), which attributed €28 million of revenue from the two existing Assetto Corsa games. The franchise was labelled as “the most significant contribution.”
However, elsewhere, things haven’t quite been as successful, with widespread layoffs at 505 Games when it reportedly shut down three offices in February 2024.
EVO was also pushed back, with the parent company stating it was to make way for Nürburgring Nordschleife DLC for the long-running Assetto Corsa Competizione title.
Initially scheduled for spring 2024, in November 2023, it issued a statement to investors saying (the then titled) Assetto Corsa 2 would be “postponed to summer 2024.”
But summer 2024 came and went, with 16th January 2025, roughly six months later, the release date was locked in.
The pressure was palpable.
As that date was so close to the start of the year, pre-release announcements that were designed to create a wave of hype happened during December. One significant trailer even landed on Christmas Day, when those who celebrate it likely spent time with family and friends.
Despite this being the largest sim racing release of January and guaranteed to be covered by leading YouTube channels, several first impressions videos were paid advertorials (#ad).
It may also hint at why third-party sales websites, such as CDKeys or Humble Bundle, were flooded by cheap codes, even before the release. There was also the incorrectly timed Steam Store countdown timer and an interminable post-term wait for it to go live. Meanwhile, the game’s website was temporarily offline.
Assetto Corsa is the company’s leading light, and Digital Bros must show significant revenue to justify the five years of development enacted on EVO.
Letting that pressure get to it has seemingly led to the launch of a game seen by some as unfit for even the ‘early access’ moniker, sullying the brand and potentially stifling future sales growth.
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Harsh to say the least. The game runs and runs well. It seems that a lot of people including a log of do called influencers have real trouble with the term early access. It also seems there is a ton of short memories out there as the first game didn’t launch well either.
However all is not Rosie as all I’m seeing is polish on every other sim racing title. Same old cars, same old tracks, what makes the original such a great title is variety. I’m really not bothered about free roam.
If I want to race NASCAR’s at pemberey I can with AC1 or touring cars at New Hampshire oval.
If Kunos does not support the modding community it will go through same way as other titles once the hype dies down. It’s concerning that mods will be licenced as this will have an effect of some absolute turkey mods have official support because they’ve paid for the licence
‘Runs well’ isn’t quite accurate, as lots of players are reporting performance issues, which is, of course, perfectly normal for an Early Access game.
Also, I think it’s more than fair to criticise the ‘always online’ aspect, as that was never discussed pre-launch – that’s the real kicker being discussed in the article.
I agree though, Assetto Corsa was a bit pants in EA (and so was ACC for a while), so if anyone can turn the narrative around it’s Kunos.