Arriving at the eleventh hour in my personal email inbox, was a little piece of news that is sure to cause a bit of controversy. Amateur Assetto Corsa modder Gui C. has been slowly applying cosmetic and user interface tweaks the historic Sauber C9 prototype found in the game’s first premium Dream Pack DLC, adding an extra layer of authenticity in areas Kunos Simulazioni seem to have missed due to time constraints. Gui’s small adjustments to the car can be found over at RaceDepartment, though an extra portion of the description added yesterday with the third revision of the mod blatantly notes suspicious activity on the part of Kunos.

Gui notes that a recent Assetto Corsa hotfix – Version 1.5.5 to be exact – has included his own files within the new build, down to the exact time of creation for the files. Gui is obviously a bit ticked off, as suggested by the bold portion of text and obvious sarcastic remarks.

Update: Gui C. has now fully retracted his statement in a post which can originally be seen in the comments section below.

Sometimes, we get it wrong – extremely wrong. This is one of those times. Our most sincere apologies to the guys at Kunos Simulazioni for the original version of this story, which unfairly cast them in a negative light.

And lastly, Gui has rectified the misunderstanding over at the modification’s home on RaceDepartment:

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and a screenshot of a brand new poll on the official Assetto Corsa forums has proven just that. After a substantial amount of post-release downloadable content, recently pushing out a mammoth Version 1.5 title update, and now setting their sights on the next generation console launch of Assetto Corsa, Kunos Simulazioni have indirectly admitted that the game is still lacking a whole bunch of stuff. For a game claiming to be “Your Racing Simulator” and retailing at nearly $70 CDN for the complete package, the list of notable omissions – as named by Kunos themselves – contradicts much of the praise the game currently receives. Any other title lacking the features below would be utterly blasted by the community.

It’s important to add some context to this poll, so let’s start there. Stefano Casillo of Kunos Simulazioni originally opened a thread within Assetto Corsa’s official forums calling for the community to vote on the next big feature to be worked on for the game. While not a terrible idea to begin with – this approach fueled the entire development of Project CARS – Casillo immediately boasts that he’ll permanently ban anyone who doesn’t “keep it clean.” Making these kinds of ridiculous threats towards your loyal fanbase are simply not necessary, especially given the ban-happy atmosphere of the official forums established a few short months ago. Prior to Christmas of 2015, Kunos staff members essentially admitted they could not deal with widespread bug reports and criticism of their title, publishing lengthy tirades boasting about removing massive amounts of users who were “only there to satisfy personal vendettas” – something eventually proven false when banned individuals began to speak up on other message boards. So you have a developer who can’t take any type of criticism asking the community to be blunt and make suggestions to help improve the game – but he’ll permanently ban you if he doesn’t like your tone. Awesome.

Now I could sit here and dedicate entire paragraphs to each of the listed proposed features, and explain in detail why it’s absurd that each specific element is missing for a multitude of reasons, but I figure for the sanity of our readers, it’s best to condense everything into one miniature rant:

There are numerous Endurance racing vehicles available in Assetto Corsa, with many more planned for upcoming DLC packs, but there is no option to score the race length by time, nor can you illuminate other cars indicating for them to move out of the way. Assetto Corsa is planned to compete against Forza Motorsport 6 on the Xbox One – a game boasting a highly detailed career mode, livery editor, and upgrades system – but you cannot select the color of your car in most online lobbies, nor is there any meaningful single player progression. Assetto Corsa was originally intended to be a replacement for aging racing simulators based on the isiMotor engine, but for a game advertised as “Your Racing Simulator”, there is no brake fade, ability to stall the engine, steering ratio adjustments, brake pressure adjustments, engine cooling elements, pit stop strategy configuration, or ability to jump the start. In short, we’re looking at a game that can be described as Milestone’s take on the Forza franchise – a title which in no way sounds appealing on paper, yet very well sits in the library of many sim racers under the name Assetto Corsa.

This is a game that basically isn’t finished by any stretch of the imagination – an issue made worse by the fact that sim racers have more or less sat around waiting for something that isn’t rFactor. Instead, after months, maybe even years of hype, the hardcore virtual drivers among us have essentially been handed little more than an appetizer, with Kunos proceeding to feed them generic press releases indicating more downloadable content is on the way.

The Kunos apologists will eventually make their way over here, claiming a forum poll of all things is evidence that the developers truly care about the future of their game before launching into a tirade explaining how PRC.net is a click-bait blog intended to provoke the forum trolls. It’s happened basically every single time we’ve posted an article like this, and will continue to happen well into the future. However, at this point there is no denying that Assetto Corsa is missing a bunch of shit it shouldn’t be, as the omission of any one feature listed above would cause mass virtual riots had these features been left out of a title such as GTR Evolution or Richard Burns Rally.

So why is this suddenly acceptable from a developer in 2016? And more importantly, why, after continuously being exposed as an asshole to your customers, is it smart to begin a feedback thread by threatening to ban anyone unwilling to challenge the echo chamber environment?

Marketing hype can only take you so far.

That is the unfortunate lesson the folks over at Kunos Simulazioni have been learning over the past 48 hours, as the highly anticipated Version 1.5 patch for soon-to-be muti-platform racing sim Assetto Corsa has failed to impress. Succeeding at whipping the fanboys into a frenzy thanks to three separate developer diaries outlining the changes in Version 1.5 of the software, the actual release of the update yielded another launch day disaster for the Italian developer, one which ultimately did not live up to any of the advertised changes.

When we’re discussing the future of the title and possibly even franchise as a whole, this was an update Kunos really needed to nail, as this will be the last major change Assetto Corsa receives prior to the game being pushed on the unsuspecting console masses – a group of users expecting a polished product comparable to the Forza or Gran Turismo series. What Assetto Corsa looks and plays like today with the Version 1.5 patch is very close to how both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One versions of the titles will function when gracing the shelves of Wal-Mart or Best Buy later this year. Now throughout the weeks leading up to the release of this update, Kunos had supposedly been hard at work behind the scenes, and published many long-winded blog posts outlining a much more polished experience for all to enjoy.

Yet within minutes of the update going live, a bug was discovered which saw the player’s car fall through the map at Spa-Francorchamps.

This bug was quickly rectified. Others, however, were not. Version 1.5 of Assetto Corsa, judging by message board discussions alone, was uploaded to Valve’s servers in a state that indicated this mammoth title update received little to no quality assurance testing. We here at PRC.net are well aware that the community members in charge of beta testing new builds of Assetto Corsa are the typical yes men who are simply happy to say they have a video game developer on their Skype contacts list, but rarely is this lack of competence displayed in such a public manner. Last year we ripped on Project CARS quite heavily for shipping a game in such a dismal state, but with what we’re seeing from Kunos Simulazioni, it’s time to do the same for the red corner – figuratively and literally.

Scrolling through the various sub-sections on the official forums dedicated to reporting flaws in the software, this is not a pretty sight. Tracks don’t load, the executable itself crashes quite frequently, and there are many discussions regarding the game’s ever-evolving tire model.

YouTube personality GamerMuscleVideos has left a rather scathing list of negative aspects over in the comments section at VirtualR.net, indicating what many hardcore sim racers have feared in regards to Assetto Corsa has indeed come true. The game’s physics, once praised by our boy Sev for being the most authentic handling model available for your personal computer, have been significantly simplified to prevent the console audience from becoming frustrated with the title. This was something confirmed to PRC.net affiliated individuals by a well-known community beta participant many months ago, and now that Version 1.5 is finally in the hands of the public, sim racers are waking up to the fact that we weren’t fear-mongering for clicks. We told you so.

Of course, it’s more than just the tire model that’s seen a reduction in quality. Kunos Simulazioni promised a much more competent artificial intelligence in Version 1.5, yet problems previously not experienced before are now popping up. An individual trying to run an offline race with a field full of Ruf’s at the Nordschleife ran into a problem where the AI literally didn’t move off of the starting line, rendering the entire race unplayable and descending dangerously into Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing territory. The Assetto Corsa fanboys will obviously have the patience to wait something like this out until it’s fixed, but your average Playstation 4 or Xbox One owner will promptly run to Reddit and create a shitstorm in a place where the sim racing community can’t downvote him and claim he has an irrational vendetta against the game.

The AI issues also extend to the game’s newest track, the fictional Black Cat County location based on American highways in Nevada and Arizona. This particular forum user claims that a jump featured in the long layout of the track causes the AI to crash and retire when racing in the new Chevrolet Corvette C7, while another user claims Career Mode events still suffer from a bug where AI cars will intentionally pull into the pits prematurely. Again, these are bugs that really shouldn’t be here given how long Assetto Corsa has been in a released state, how much DLC is available, and how close we are to the large-scale console release backed by 505 Games.

There are many diehard Assetto Corsa players among us, and I expect several of them to raid the comment section below claiming I have no right to publish an article regarding the state of Version 1.5, as I personally haven’t had the game installed in a couple of months. Now I think it’s 100% fair game to make those comments, but I‘d like to turn around and ask those individuals a question instead: Why should I have this title installed?

YouTube personalities are claiming there has been a tangible reduction in the fidelity of the tire model, which is pretty much the last thing any hardcore sim racer like myself wants to hear. Many users are reporting that the software is crashing, and it’s genuinely difficult to monitor the various glitch forums in an effort to log just how many aspects of Version 1.5 are fucked up. Lastly, there are still major problems with the game’s offline artificial intelligence; something Kunos promised would be rectified for both yesterday’s patch, as well as the upcoming console release, yet it’s somehow gotten even worse.

For a supposedly finished racing simulator preparing for a major console release, their official forums currently read as if the game is still deep in Steam’s Early Access program. This whole situation is only made worse by the fact that Kunos are constantly boasting about their upcoming content licenses and DLC plans, indicating the team from Italy truly don’t care about crafting Assetto Corsa into an enjoyable experience. With the past 48 hours offering little to no genuine improvements, and only a few months until the game arrives on next-generation consoles, I struggle to see how anyone can have any faith in Assetto Corsa.

Another day brings us another hostile exchange between developer and customer. Stealing the spotlight mere hours into 2016, Stefano Casillo from Kunos Simulazioni is at it again, this time with a group of users he’s dubbed the VR Mafia. While I’m personally not a fan of Virtual Reality headsets based on my own experience with the rather lackluster DK2 build of the Oculus Rift, an entirely separate group of people have nothing but praise for the hardware, and it’s easy to understand why. The most practical use for a virtual reality headset is within any sort of simulator where you’re operating a vehicle, whether it be in Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X, or Kunos Simulazioni’s Assetto Corsa. Provided both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift can clear up some of the resolution woes, there is a tangible advantage to strapping these awkward looking goggles to your face, and it’s understandable that people are curious as to when support for each individual headset will come to their favorite game.

When asked about whether the first consumer version of the Oculus Rift will be supported in Assetto Corsa, Stefano responds by saying they simply haven’t had the time to take a detailed look at it. This news comes in sharp contrast to the recent announcement that Project CARS will fully support the Oculus Rift CV1 model at launch. Another Twitter user jumps into the fray and jokingly suggests that Kunos are hard at work implementing HTC Vive support, but Stefano immediately rejects the theory by saying the team aren’t even considering it. This starts a bit of a war, and a third Twitter user suggests that he is disappointed when developers like Kunos hint at Virtual Reality support and implement partial functionality in their games for certain pre-release builds of the technology, but do not fully follow through in the end and view everything as merely a fad. Despite not caring for the expensive gadget myself, I can see this guy’s point. A whole shitload of people are playing Assetto Corsa with the Oculus Rift DK2, and they were led to believe that modern racing sims including Assetto Corsa would work towards fully embracing this revolution. It turns out that some aren’t.

Stefano childishly condemns this user as part of a Virtual Reality Headset Mafia, and brags about blocking him on Twitter. This dude wasn’t even being an ass, he just pointed out that Kunos sucked people in with partial Virtual Reality support under the guise that it would be more complete at some point in the future, and the developer responds by telling him off. Fantastic.

Is this interaction the result of stress building at Kunos Headquarters? I’d like to think so. Assetto Corsa was scheduled to come out at some point in April, and was instead delayed until the summer months to rectify several nagging polish issues. Now it’s important to note that these problems have little to do with menu hiccups or save game deletion glitches; users on Reddit are still blasting the game’s pitiful artificial intelligence – an aspect that will serve to frustrate console users expecting a hardcore alternative to Gran Turismo or Forza if it’s not rectified in time.

Currently, the offline artificial intelligence in Assetto Corsa simply cannot be considered ready for public consumption. A Finnish user of the controversial message board 4Chan has posted a series of short clips documenting what happens when he tries to hold a quick race consisting of nothing but AI cars, and the results are truly astounding. While Kunos staff members claim the AI operate under the same physics as the human player (and others have began to regurgitate this), the videos Grounded Fin have posted demonstrate the exact opposite – lines of cars awkwardly sway back and forth on the track, reluctant to pass each other and randomly jamming on the brakes for a fraction of a second. Console gamers used to the talented bots found in Forza 6’s unbeatable difficulty will outright not accept something as unfinished as the following video.

As we near the inevitable console release of Assetto Corsa, it seems as if these guys over at Kunos keep finding new ways to slip up and run afoul of the community.

The latter half of 2015 here on PRC.net was admittedly spent ripping on one game in particular. After the abysmal launch of Project CARS – a title plagued by a pandemic of hefty technical glitches and viral marketing gone wrong – our attention then turned to the participant in the red corner. Set to deliver us from the extremely disappointing outcome of Slightly Mad Studio’s crowdfunded racing simulation, the small team over at Kunos Simulazioni gained a demonstrably larger fanbase in the weeks following the release of Project CARS. A title that was intended to bring sim racers into the next-generation of video game technology, Assetto Corsa established itself as the most popular racing simulator on Valve’s PC marketplace once the dust had settled – easily beating out iRacing, DiRT Rally, and Project CARS in terms of active users.

However, while many sim racers sung the high praises of Assetto Corsa, we started digging into the various rumblings and uncertainty of the title’s future that were mentioned in passing throughout the dark corners of a few sim racing communities. Users once dismissed as annoying trolls and obsessive fanboys came running to us with very genuine problems they had experienced during their time spent within the sim, and quickly we began to paint a much different picture of Assetto Corsa compared to the shining achievement the game was marketed as across other various sim racing news outlets. We pushed what had admittedly been a flurry of “anti-Assetto Corsa” articles on our readers; and eventually concluded that viral marketing had played a large role in how Assetto Corsa was portrayed to the masses.

It appears that our desire to go against the agenda of other websites has gotten under the skin of employees at Kunos Simulazioni.

A sub-section of Reddit exists solely for game developers to converse with each other anonymously or semi-anonymously in regards to their experiences within the industry. And that in itself is pretty cool. Much like message boards reserved for law enforcement officers, firefighters, or retail employees, r/GameDev serves as a “safe haven” for developers to talk among fellow industry contributors without leaking information or personal feelings through intrusive interviews. In a thread started by anongamedev22, a relatively simple question is posed towards his fellow comrades: how do you deal with psychotic customers?

It’s an understandable question to ask: some gamers indeed go through great lengths to damage the reputation of a company, occasionally they’re successful in their campaign, and this can be hurtful to those on the receiving end. The newest game in the Tom Clancy franchise by UbiSoft – The Division – has already been met with intense critical and user backlash for collision detection issues that literally break certain aspects of the game’s online progression. As a result, massive sites like 4Chan and Reddit are being flooded with posts regarding Tom Clancy’s Walking Simulator, all of which basically link to the same video. Another popular shit disturber would be the infamous Derek Smart, who has embarked on a prolonged campaign to question the legitimacy of the upcoming crowdfunded title Star Citizen – though I’m not too well-versed on whether he’s in the right or not. And most recently, we’ve got our boy Bacon Country, who went on a lengthy tirade regarding the lack of quality in the most recent NHL game released by EA Sports after his Career Mode player was sent down to the minors despite leading the NHL in points.

What I’m getting at, however, isn’t too difficult to understand. It’s the internet, and if people feel let down by a video game, some motherfuckers will pull no punches and post some extremely unflattering shit that could embarrass them in the eyes of the public – and sometimes, they’re in the right. It’s understandable that a developer would want to know how to handle this situation better – they have feelings, too.

But for Kunos, this whole scenario is just part of being successful.

Make no mistake, that line about “blogs dedicated to discrediting your game” is about us, because we’re the only news outlet in the sim racing scene who does that.

So to get all Dr. Phil up in here, how does this incredibly obvious jab toward our site make me feel?

I feel disappointed.

I’ve owned Assetto Corsa since the Early Access version went live in the fall of 2013. I’ve posted on numerous forums over the past few years encouraging users to get hyped for certain major updates, and leaked information from our boy in the closed beta program with the intent to get people excited about what Kunos had in store for sim racers. However, when the game’s development stalled in favor of a misguided console release and a steady stream of DLC packs, so did my excitement. Yes, it had come a long way since the humble beginnings in 2013, but it still had a long way to go. It wasn’t fun to fire up Assetto Corsa for a quick single player race, and be subjected to so many AI issues that I basically made a meta-game out of how many ridiculous screenshots I could take of the computer-controlled carnage. The awkward, clunky, and limited multiplayer functionality was a far cry from some of the more traditional isiMotor sims used for competitive league play without any issue. In a short period of time, it got extremely hard to defend this game as a sim racer. This wasn’t where the genre was supposed to be going.

From an outsider’s perspective, you could say PRC.net spent a few months carrying out a vendetta against Kunos Simulazioni. Truthfully, we were merely documenting what happened whenever we fired up the game. If it wasn’t good, that’s not our problem. Now if you enjoy Assetto Corsa regardless of the several flaws, that really doesn’t matter to us. Objectively, there are many things the game simply does not do well compared to the other products on the market. We spent time documenting those aspects, because nobody else in the community would.

I am disappointed to see a developer attribute a group of people finding very real and tangible bugs in their game – bugs that were bad enough to cause a two month delay for the console release – as a “milestone” on the road to success. Like, let’s be real here – the guy called these people idiots for getting upset enough about massive glitches to document them, only for his game to be delayed due to the exact glitches people were complaining about. How is this a milestone, exactly? The customers you called idiots ended up being right.

Now we could end the article here, but instead I want to draw attention to another reply within the thread that takes a remarkably different approach to the whole situation, and in the end it worked out for the better. This is thinking outside the box on an entirely new level.

This is the approach Sector 3 Studios have taken with us. Make no mistake, we have absolutely trashed the team over the previous few months in regards to some of the questionable decisions regarding RaceRoom Racing Experience, such as the absurd micro-transactions, questionable online server bugs, unrealistic exploit setups, and region-locked competitive events. However, while other developers have labelled PRC.net as a “hate blog” that’s “dedicated” to “discrediting” their game, Sector 3 have instead taken our articles as genuine feedback. The ability to run a low-downforce setup across every single vehicle and location combination in the game has been fixed in the upcoming patch – and it was thanks to us making it front-page news that the issue had even been discovered. Yes, it sucked for the guys at Sector 3 to see hardcore sim racers calling their game “simcade” upon the discovery of this exploit, and threatening to move on from the title altogether, but the end result is that the game has been made better.

And I think we can all agree that’s a much more positive outcome than merely yelling at people on forums and banning those who disagree with you.