Motorsport Games is back at it again. They recently announced their newest game Le Mans Ultimate. The first ever WEC game and the first dedicated Le Mans SportsCar game since 24 Hours of Le Mans or Test Drive Le Mans.

I recently watched some gameplay of it, which is playable st the 24 Hours of Le Mans this weekend. Its being describe as an rFactor 2 reskin. It appears to be in a beta state with bad engines sounds. As much I’d love to see a WEC game, which it was looking like GTR3 was going to be the official game a few years ago, you should be wary of Motorsport Games

Known for such classics as NASCAR Ignition. This was the first game to use rfactor physics in a NASCAR. The game was full of bugs and glitches still to this day. The next game in the series was cancelled.

Motorsport has struggled to make money. Their stock tanked after the failure of Ignition. Then came allegations of crunch and cutting corners during development from the devs. Last year, the entire board resigned.

Many expected them to declare bankruptcy. They didn’t, but began canceling games they got the licenses for like BTCC. Then they made what can be seen as desperation moves.

Motorsport Games treatment of the IndyCar license broke what little hope and trust they had left with the sim racing community. They contractually stopped the streaming of iRacing events at Indy and halted public Indy 500s. You can not stream anything on iRacing with IndyCars, current or old. So far we’ve seen a few screenshots of the game.

Theres rumors that IndyCar and NASCAR are in court trying to get their licenses back. Motorsport is rumored to be asking for cash advances from the series to make the games.

For me they’ve shown this game is going to be bad. There’s not reason you need to stifle the previous rights holder. The fact that they felt a need to halt streaming is overkill. I could understand since IRacing is a service you stop the sale of the current chassis. Besides that, if you have a better product, you’d let it shine.

You already have the exclusive rights to the series. You have no competition on console. On PC you have some great Asetto Corse and AutoMobalista 2 mods, which they may want to looking at the situation. Mods are free but publishers have gone after them. Take 2, Konami and others have been known to use their legal power to intimidate modders.