Assetto Corsa EVO’s launch in Early Access via Steam had problems. There is no sugarcoating it. Let’s go through what went wrong and what needs to be fixed.
First-off: The Delay
The release started wonderfully with almost an hour of delay of the Early Access. This caused Assetto Corsa’s new official Discord to virtually get buried in members memeing. This situation caused the moderating staff of the discord to disable posting of images and reacting to messages via emojis.
At the same time, the voice chats in that Discord server would then be filled to the brim and shortly after, everyone was muted. In the meantime, voice channels were completely turned off in the server.
Kunos did right to hire a team of moderators before opening the server to the public.
Next-up: The Lack (of cars)
Upon launch, 20 cars and 5 circuits were said to be available. What was delivered was slightly different.
The tracks, although technically 5, already included different layouts. Suzuka does not only include the GP layout, but also the East and West layouts. Brands Hatch, similarly, includes both the GP and Indy layouts.
On the selection of cars, though, there seemed to be an instant problem.
Players could only select 6 out of the promised 20 cars. A quick hotfix was pushed to Steam a few hours after the game arrived. This fix enabled players to finally drive all 20 promised cars, however one big questions remained:
Why?
Finally: The Implications
A lot of the gripes of currently missing features, like:
- Initial availability of only 6 cars
- Lack of car customisability options (aside pre-made combinations)
- Unavailability to save a drive profile
- Inaccessibility of the store/renting and
- Unavailability of the in-game currency
were all alleged to be due to a more intrusive online requirement than originally anticipated by most. While it’s unconfirmed at the moment whether Assetto Corsa EVO is meant to be always online or not, the fact that it even is a question left a bitter taste in the mouth of many.
What Kunos needs to do now
The groundworks have been laid with opening the Discord server as well as hiring a social media manager for Assetto Corsa at 505 Games, their publisher. What Kunos really needs to step up now is the information game. Talk more about what we can expect and about how things are meant to be.
It’s really important to work on disillusionment of the masses right now. According to steamdb.info, Assetto Corsa EVO is currently the 2nd most trending game on Steam. It comes just after DYNASTY WARRIORS: ORIGINS, which undoubtably is a game meant for a bigger market of players.
Assetto Corsa EVO’s launch peaked at 25,752 players at the same time. This more than doubled Assetto Corsa Competizione’s 12,376 9 months ago and also beat out Assetto Corsa’s 19,796 24 hours ago. All these statistics come from steamdb.info.
This proves people want this sim to succeed. However, if played improperly, Kunos could lose an amount of faith the community has in them.
Assetto Corsa EVO is available via Steam right now.
If you want to read more on EVO, feel free to check out our previous articles: https://tracc.eu/tag/assetto-corsa-evo/