Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC) has been on the forefront of competitive sim racing for years. Many GT-based esports series have been using the Italian sim racing game as their platform of choice. With a new surge of sim racing titles on the horizon, how long can ACC stay relevant?
The Limitations of the ACC Platform
Content Limitations
Assetto Corsa Competizione is a sim racing game featuring content from the SRO GT World Challenge. Developed by Kunos Simulazioni, the scope of content is therefore quite limited. SRO, with whom Kunos seem to be under contract, have been promoting GT-style racing since 1995. Theoretically, a whole lot of historical content could be featured, but previously only up-to-date content was released.
Since Assetto Corsa Competizione was first released into early access in early 2018, this gives us a grand total of 7 seasons worth of GT World Challenge events. Including regional series, this totals a whole lot of 60 different circuits that could theoretically be included in ACC. The game, though, features only 25.
A great potential for more circuits is there. However, thanks to limitations like maybe staffing, a whole lot of the potential is untapped.
Regarding Cars, SRO famously hosts GT3, GT4 and GT2 races. Assetto Corsa Competizione additionally features the BMW M2 CS Cup. This German car is only part of the larger TC America grid, which alone this year features plenty of other interesting touring cars. Among which are:
Additionally, a French Touring Car series with, amongst others, Peugeots, Ligiers and Golfs races under SRO’s banners. Touring Cars, therefore, would have a great potential to also be featured in ACC. However, that hasn’t come to pass. And at this point, I doubt it will be.
Feature Limitations
There are some things that Assetto Corsa Competizione does exceptionally well. Other things haven’t been quite so well implemented. Let’s start with the features that have been partly implemented, yet not quite.
Custom liveries may be in the game but the way it was implemented feels incomplete. Creating and installing custom liveries is such a clunky process. Not only that, but it feels very much like a workaround for something that was planned to be implemented but they stopped in the middle of it.
Driver swaps are in the game and they mostly work. Some bugs, however, have been in the game since the beginning in regards to driver swaps. Even if it works without issue, the fact that the driver has to set up everything about the pitstop is challenging to say the least.
Certain safety features like full course yellows or AI safety cars are among the normal gameplay features missing, which would help endurance events go about more orderly.
Finally, an important distinction between Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa Competizione: The lack of modding support. Even though Kunos anticipates modding to start happening as soon as ACC stops being updated, there is no guarantee it will happen. The lack of official support means that potential modders will have to know, or get to know, Unreal Engine 4 and potentially even crack backend databases and other game files.
How Limitations Might Affect the Future of Assetto Corsa Competizione
The big question now remains “Will Assetto Corsa Competizione keep being played after development stops?”
A lack of content could easily be remedied with mods. There are so many mods out there for older titles like Assetto Corsa or rFactor 2. Especially the original Kunos title is seeing player number only trumped by iRacing, all thanks to modding. However, the lack of developer support of modding might really hinder all ambitions in that regard. People might just decide “it’s not worth my time” and look for modding opportunities, elsewhere. A prime alternative might be the upcoming Assetto Corsa Evo, for which I published my hopes a long time ago. That game is slated as a modernisation of the original Assetto Corsa. With that, it might just take over the modding scene completely and skip out Competizione, leaving it forever stranded in a finished, but unmodded state. That, however, will completely depend on the whim of the modders.
The lacking features might be able to get added via mods, however not even the original Assetto Corsa has received stuff like an AI safety car as a modded feature. Custom livery support, on the other hand, is a feature that has capabilities of being enhanced using external tools. Whether stuff like driver swaps can be improved wholly depends on the capability for netcode modding. If that is possible and people decide they want to spend time developing it, then hoorah! We might get improvements on that front.
In Conclusion
Personally, though, I doubt that much modding will be done. There might be a push in the beginning but without dedicated modding tools, I fear there is little hope that ACC can develop as a platform post-developer support.
I know, however, that quite a few people have hope and do believe that Assetto Corsa Competizione can take over as the new norm. Whatever will be the case, we will find out sooner or later, with Assetto Corsa Evo scheduled to still release in 2024.
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