Race and Vehicle Simulations

I’m pissed off. In case it escaped your attentions, it was Christmas day yesterday. What should be a day of joy, gifts, beer and sprouts, was for me a day of great misery and sadness. It really was probably the worst day of my life.

“Why so sad?” you might ask. I’ll tell you why: I was betrayed and let down. You see, Kunos Simulazioni have announced some DLC… and expect people to pay for it. Yes, I kid you not: they want people to pay for more content.

This is just all so wrong on so many levels. First of all, let’s rewind a bit to try and explain why I am so pissed off about this. They revealed that on the 24th of December, they would make an announcement. They quickly clarified that this would not be something being released to download. So obviously, taking this on board, I came to the only logical conclusion: they were going to release some new content or features for us to download and play with. Then the announcement came: they were going to laser scan the Nordschleife (the track voted most wanted by users of AC), put together a pack of ten cars (as voted for by the users of AC), and that this would be released towards the end of next year.

Well… where to begin? It really is difficult to know where to start. These polls to vote for most wanted tracks and cars were a couple of weeks ago, so surely they could have stuff ready for release now? This is simply greed and laziness on their part; they want to lie back, do nothing, rake in all the money. Speaking of raking in money, here comes the real kicker: they want people to pay for it. Unbelievable… They want to have a holiday in Germany, spend ages on the Ring having fun taking measurements, and then they want us to pay for it all? Yeah right!

I personally don’t like the Ring anyway, so how can this make any sense for the community as a whole? Surely if I don’t like it, no one else will? And besides the fact no one really wants the Ring in AC, they could easily do, what, 40-50 other tracks as easily as the Ring, and give them all to us for free? And these ten cars? Well I personally want a version of my Mum’s Peugeot 107 in there, so what the fuck would I want with these cars? They’re not all exactly what I would choose, so what a load of bollocks, and as if anyone else would want them. These guys really are fucking clueless.

If you’re still not understanding why I’m so angry, let me try and break it down. AC isn’t finished yet (despite them forcing me to buy a copy!). It costs £30 on Steam to get AC in Early Access form (£30! Can you believe it?!?). The game isn’t fucking finished! It doesn’t have all of the content they PROMISED it would have, it doesn’t have all of the features they PROMISED it would have, and they force me to pay £30 for it?!? I paid £30 and have only had 50 hours of enjoyment from it so far, and it isn’t bloody finished… What planet are these guys on? Do they honestly think I paid £300 for my new graphics card to go and spend more than a few quid on content to play on it? They’re in dream land.

Their “plan” is you pay less now than you will when the finished game comes out (more than £30!), and they will keep working on it and adding stuff. Then once they’ve put in all of the stuff they said they would, you will be able to get extra stuff on top… For a fee! That’s right: once they deliver what you’ve paid for, to get extra stuff you have to pay. This is just so unfair.

I got my calculator out and crunched a few numbers. They have about ten members on the team; AC must have easily sold like 10 million copies by now, so that’s 30 million each they have AND COUNTING. 30 million each for playing on computers whilst on holiday at a race track. And they want us to pay money in the future for more stuff to come? Pffff, they can go fuck themselves.

To give them credit, there is one thing I can’t fault them on. They were clever enough to trust that people like me in the community would take stuff at face value, actually read things that were said, and also think things through calmly and rationally. But that’s too little to rescue things here. That’s the one thing they got right; everything else was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

So yeah, thanks Kunos, thanks for FUCKING RUINING CHRISTMAS. You guys don’t know what it’s like to want to spend Christmas with friends or family of loved ones. You don’t know what it’s like to have to pay bills and stuff. Whilst you live in your millionaire mansions snorting drugs off of scantily clad ladies strewn across Ferraris and Paganis, some of us live in the real world where numbers have to add up, where incomings have to meet outgoings, and where money doesn’t just grow on trees and everything doesn’t just come for free with a click of the fingers. FUCK YOU.

So happy Christmas everyone. I hope for some of you it wasn’t ruined as it was for me. I’m off to blow money on shit I don’t really want or need to make myself feel better. Then maybe later I’ll go on 4chan and make disparaging remarks about female genitalia whilst wondering what it’s actually like in real life. Real life. Some of us have to live in it.