SCS Blog

[Callipso]

what would you expect from a company like SCS? the modders do all the work so why have their development teams do anything, they can hire 50keda to do their truck models for them and its probably what you would have gotten even if he was still doing it for a hobby and not being payed for it. I'm sure if they wanted they would hand a check to the devs here at pro-mods to do their map for them too. That might actually be an improvement on their part, it might get things done faster and have much better quality work than the vanilla barrenscape map that doesn't have much flavor or remind anyone of being in their part of Europe as they drive through.

Its no secret that they are going at this pace due to the massive amount of content created outside of their studio, it a big money saver for them. think of not having to pay your employees for new truck models or new map sectors, new assets etc. just sit on that cash and pay out when you need to.

[Vøytek]

No, I think none of our devs would like to work for them. Why? Look at their map. They won't allow you to create what you want, like it's done in ProMods. Looks like they have strict rules. "Make random city and add 5 well-known low-poly buildings in the bacground". "Don't use city names that aren't ingame, use XXXXX". That's just bad.

[MYE2001]

^^ I was thinking the same. ProMods developers makes this map as a hobby job. They have no time limitations, they can develop map as they want with great attention and be happy with it. This is fun. But if they join SCS, they will have time limitations, they won't be able to develop the map with much detail as it "takes too much time and too expensive" for business practices. And I guess map making becomes a chore instead of fun if you don't have the enthusiasm.

And I think ETS 2 would be long dead if it there were no mods. Think playing this game without maps like ProMods, RusMap, Hungary Map. Without trailer mods, without AI car packs, without new trucks or tuning parts...

[Roudou]

I don't understand why you spit on SCS.

In 16 years i've played a lot of games with great modding community, like OpF, ArmA I&II, FS series, MSTS, and more. It's the first time i read those kind of comments. Of course you are part of the fact that ETS2 is still alive, and sorry to ask this, but, don't you give yourself too much importance ?

What i mean is, ProMods doesn't exist without ETS2, but ETS2 could exist without ProMods, so SCS is most important than ProMods. Modders has always been the guardians of the longlife of a video game, nothing more. Sorry to be crude, but if you spit on SCS just because they make cash, well, try to sell your work.

Something more i have to say, details is not everything. Feelings are important too, specialy when it's about your own country or a well known place

[Vøytek]

I didn't say anything like that
They made this game - they earn money. It's one of best games I bought. It was cheap and it's still fun to play it after 3,5 years so that was a great deal. I was saying it many times. There were some free updates, this game changed a lot since it's release and that's awesome but if mods didn't exist, I'd quit playing it after half a year probably...

And if you're mentioning well known places - SCS map has some places that look similar to real life but cities lack interesting design. It's almost the same everywhere. 3-4 random roads and buildings in the backgound. And those interchanges... Way too few prefabs. It was interesting at the beginning but I can't imagine playing it without mods now.

I'm not saying that SCS is bad. I really appreciate their development but I'm afraid that releasing ATS was a bad decision and some users won't support ETS2 longer, because they demand DLCs much faster. It doesn't matter for me acutally. I can use PM but it's EURO Truck Simulator and after such a long time we still don't see Spain, expanded Italy, Portugal, Balkans, Ireland or Iceland and modders already did it. In their free time.

[Roudou]

When i say "feelings", i don't speak about road network. There is a lot of places i don't know how they exactly look like, and to be honest it's not a priority to me. But i want to have the feeling to drive in the country, or state, or geographical region i'm suppose to drive in. SCS did bad on this thing till Scandinavia, or maybe not, because i have no idea of how Scandinavia looks like. I like ATS for that feeling, road mapping is bad, but i have the feeling to drive in western USA, even if i think Northern California is more green than i see in ATS, but i could be wrong.

For ETS2, ProMods did a better job on this feeling than SCS, for sure. But exept the Le Mans region, i've never had the feeling to drive in France, maybe because of the assets you can use. Yes it's french signs, road markings, some places are accurate, but... I don't know, something is wrong, maybe i'm expecting too much.

[martinusK]

In my opinion, i don't give the game's developers money to get an unfinished and detail-lacking base game. I pay to get the full deal, unless the game is Early Access or i can know for a fact that there will be more expanding updates. ETS2 relies on mods, paintjob DLC's and yet again, unfinished, detail-lacking map DLC's. And that is bad.

More and more i'm feeling that SCS has learnt it's business strategy from Ubisoft and Activision - release base game with little good stuff, and sell the rest of the game in DLC's. Oh wait? What's that? The DLC's lack in quality aswell (i'm looking at you, Going East and 80% of Scandinavia DLC)? This is a growing cancer in the video game development community.

Relying on mods is never a good thing. It leaves a bad mark on you, and it's unprofitable aswell.

(and btw, the Le Mans region is pretty old (release v1.5). I'm not a huge fan of it too but it's still better than anything done in the vanilla SCS. Kutchek seemed to like the default prefabs.)

[Lugge-Trucker]

More and more i'm feeling that SCS has learnt it's business strategy from Ubisoft and Activision - release base game with little good stuff, and sell the rest of the game in DLC's. Oh wait? What's that? The DLC's lack in quality aswell (i'm looking at you, Going East and 80% of Scandinavia DLC)?

You definitely cannot compare SCS to Ubisoft or Activision. SCS is only developing ETS2 and ATS and only get very little income by further selling their older games, whereas e.g. Ubisoft is a very big company that are developing on many games and therefore create much more income.

All the developers (mappers, model builders, etc.) at SCS also need to pay taxes, pay for an accomodation, pay for their own food and many also have to care for their family and kids. So, SCS has to pay for their developers' living and maybe for truck licences and software/server licences... That's why SCS also depends on income to stay alive. Imagine, if they wouldn't release DLC's but only free updates. How should they generate income? ETS2 and ATS have been bought by the community and I don't think that the ETS2 and ATS community is growing fast enough, so that SCS can pay their bills only by selling those two games.

Therefore, they need a way to generate income further on. The only way for them (unlike Ubisoft, who sell many more versatile games) is releasing DLCs. Without those, as already said, they wouldn't be able to keep the business alive. They depend on them and only can develop further on by selling DLCs.
They also couldn't keep on paying all their bills by only release 1 big and well mapped map mod, where the whole company works at. That's why they came up with the idea of their Paintjob DLCs. It is not that much work to create those DLCs and it is also not required to own those DLCs for gameplay (they also could make all their new trucks payable or features like advanced trailer coupling). Most of their DLCs are just some optic assets, but definitely not necessary. You can also definitely discuss about the quality and the content of the DLCs, but those DLCs are just necessary to keep the development alive so that we will be enjoying further updates (even free ones like the new Renault truck that will be released, when France DLC comes out), that might change the gameplay and further increase playability (e.g. multipick-ups, own trailers).

The situation could even be worse. Compared to the DLC policy of Dovetail Games and their Train Simulator, you really have to say that the DLC policy of SCS is fair and the prices are also in an acceptable frame.

I just suggest to watch Squirrel's Truck Diaries EU Ep.3 if you haven't seen it already, where he is talking about this as well and I think, he hits the point there.

[Peterson]

One thing is economy, other is super slow progress in terms of developpement. It can't take several months to make adjustable steering wheels, multi part rims or skins. Or an ugly tunning mod. Or new cargo. Or a new truck, christ, game this succesful just can't have problems with licencing! With all tools they have, with all their knowledge, with all their resources! I gave my money to SCS, and I expect something in return.

[M4rkus]

Well, I can understand the point but I don't think an open letter or something like that would be of any use. I don't think it's like they're being slow on purpose. They seem to have quite a lot of "loose ends" (Promods terminology ), for example the ATS rebuilding project. Which they are doing because they have listened to their community. Yet I agree, things are very slow, France should've been complete with the initial release but there's not much use complaining.