ETS2 Eastern European Expansion

We are happy to announce that we are working on the first official add-on for Euro Truck Simulator 2. This map expansion is centering on Eastern Europe with special focus on Poland, so we took the opportunity of a press-day taking place at our Polish publishing partner CDP to let the word know about it yesterday.

We have been working on the expansion for some time already, we have bits and pieces to show already, but there is still a lot of work left to complete the new part of the map.

Why go East for the first map expansion? With all respect to our truck sim games' fans across the globe, Polish fan community is one of the most active and most supportive. Cooperation between CDP and SCS in Poland is also exemplary. So we felt that this region is a great candidate for testing out if creating map expansions is going to become a viable business for SCS Software. It would be great if the market can prove that growing the world of Euro Truck Simulator 2 is not lost time for us.

Once ETS2 EEE is completed, we'll have to decide where to go next... Scandinavia? Rest of France with an option to go toward Spain? Italy? Balkans? Continue East towards Russia? We will have to try to come up with a method to understand the highest potential and set the priorities right...

Final note: This map add-on/DLC will not be free (we are pondering ~EUR 10 price point), but it's an optional expansion. Throughout the year 2013, we are going to keep improving the core game with free updates for everybody with fixes and many improvements, including for example all new trucks models, or new AI code. So while the 1.3.x patch is very near, stay tuned for further patches coming down the road. And some surprises on top of it all ;-).

A New ETS2 Patch Almost Here

In a few days we should be ready to finally update Euro Truck Simulator 2 again. We are working on improving many parts of the game, we are definitely not just in maintenance mode. The development effort is substantial; we are committed to evolving the game for a long time. But things take time to get them done right, more than we would like for sure. Several extensive features which will not make it into this patch are already under development. Please have patience with us!

What to expect now?

First and foremost, the 1.3.x patch is bringing two more official truck brands into the game. Of course moders are doing fabulous job in this area already, but this is major news for us. We are proud to have official support from 6 of 7 biggest European truck brands. Down the line, this is going to have very important influence on the quality of our games, as well us perception of our games by the public and truck industry insiders alike. Far from all ETS2 players use mods, so having the real brands in the game "out of the box" is a welcome feature for the many thousands of players just using the standard game.

Second major development is addition of Product Key verification step to the activation process. It is no secret that in the recent weeks, a "key gen" has appeared which can fool the built-in Product Key check in many cases. On release, the game had no true "DRM" protection, it never contacted any database of valid keys to see if the Product Key is really issued and in good standing. All that the game did was check if the Key conformed to a complex mathematical formula. This protection step though was reverse-engineered, a key gen unleashed, and since then piracy is through the roof. It's not just casual piracy, it seems that several shady companies have made a business out of selling these fake product keys on the cheap, scamming customers by claims that these keys are valid. We had to do something about it, it was urgent as this was badly hurting both our pocket and our reputation. So instead of bringing you a new patch quickly, we had to concentrate on closing this hole and spend over a month of programmers' time implementing an extra Product Key verification step to the game. As of the new patch, everybody will be asked to re-enter their Product Key again, and this time the check will be more thorough, actually comparing the key with a database of valid keys. Any keys which are not genuine or are coming from stolen credit card purchases will be refused. We expect quite a storm of complaints as people will find out that the key they were using until now just fine was in fact invalid, but we simply must take this step to protect our business. Steam version of Euro Truck Simulator 2 can be activated by using genuine Product Keys issued for any other edition of the game, and seeing the activity on Steam it is already a clear indication of what to expect with so many people trying to use fake keys to register the game there.

The patch change-log has some 20 lines covering fixes and improvements not listed above, but we'll post this detailed list closer to release of the patch. For now, let us show you some of the visible changes and additions to the ETS2 truck fleet.

Small advertisement for our twitter channel

If you are not following SCS Software on our Twitter, you are missing out on some tiny news, just like right now about ETS2 being #1 Top Seller on Steam!

At Last!

We are looking forward to welcoming new truck simulation game players - Euro Truck Simulator 2 was published on Steam just a few minutes ago.

Update 1 am Prague time:

We just got word from Valve, the original ETS2 Product Keys (also known as CD keys though they are not necessarily only from CD editions of the game) should as of now activate the game. Please try again if you've failed to activate the game on Steam before!

Steam today!

We got word from Valve that finally, Euro Truck Simulator 2 should appear on Steam Store today. It has taken many more weeks than we hoped, but finally we have managed to push the game through the system and get it ready for release. Unless they bump into some last-minute show-stopping problem, this page should be on Steam tomorrow:

Product Keys (also known as CD-Keys) issued for ETS2 should allow for activating the game on Steam as well. No key-gen trickery will work though - this is a topic which will be addressed by the next non-Steam patch, too.

The first version of the game to appear on Steam will be equivalent to 1.2.5 which has been out there for a long time. We are working on several improvements and new features for the game, but they will only appear in the next update - When It's Done.

Linux is close!

Finally today we see the light at the end of the tunnel - Euro Truck Simulator 2 Linux port is almost finished. Very soon we should be able to start beta testing it.

ETS2 Game of The Year!

Euro Truck Simulator 2 has been announced as PC Gamer's Simulation Game of the Year 2012!

Few moments working in the games industry are as gratifying as receiving such an award by a prestigious games publication, except perhaps when reading praise straight from you, our fans! ;-)

Looks like our UK publisher Excalibur Publishing is already celebrating this fact in their nice video introducing the game to sim newbies...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2013!

So what are we up to? No doubt many of our fans are very curious about what is coming from SCS Software in 2013. Let me pour some fuel on the bonfire of speculation!

As we hinted in a previous blog post, based on the massive amount of input from our fan base, we are contemplating moving into several areas at once. To understand what it would take to run several projects in parallel - the resources it would take and the amount of work ahead of us, we have split up the company into several mini-teams. Each group is tasked with research, pre-production analysis and tentative planning.

The strategic goal is clear - we don't want to spend two or three years again working on a single big game, having little to offer to our fans until it's finished. Instead, we'll be exploring different ways of doing projects with different business models to be able to give you more stuff to play and more often.

One thing is for sure - we are going to continue adding features and extending Euro Truck Simulator 2. In addition to normal updates, this will most likely include optional paid map-expanding DLC(s). We are already working on one such extension - early next year we are thinking of approaching the public and our fans through www.indiegogo.com, in order to get very important feedback on viability of such game extensions.

For this paragraph, we are moving into areas of what-ifs and maybes. We have purchased (at no small cost) several domains which we think will be important for the projects we are considering for the next year: www.americantrucksimulator.com, www.eurocoachsimulator.com, and www.worldoftrucks.com. We are not ready to reveal features sets or release time-frames, but you now see in the open what we are thinking about.

SCS Software's Forums membership is approaching 400, look like we have a slow start so far. Maybe discussing the opportunities offered by our tentative 2013 plans is a good reason to join in!

Thank you very much for staying loyal to us through the years, let's work together to make the years to come even more exciting!

Pavel Sebor
CEO, SCS Software

Driving on ice

Here is a video recorded earlier this December on another of our truck engine sound recording sessions. Looks like we are going to welcome Volvo brand into ETS2 with properly sounding truck engine. ;)

We happened to pick a freezing cold day to perform the recording, but it was a great opportunity to experience how the vehicle behaves on ice. You can tell we had quite some fun!

The past two months since the release of Euro Truck Simulator 2 have been very busy; we are not resting on our laurels after the great start for Euro Truck Simulator 2 on the market. SCS Software is currently split into four groups pushing in four different directions! This video represents the effort of the one group working on improvements for Euro Truck Simulator 2, but we are looking forward to sharing with you our plans for the other three projects we have in pre-production now.

We should not forget to mention that if you go to forum.scssoft.com, you will find a place to discuss SCS games related stuff. We are launching without much fanfare, consider this a trial by fire, we still need to finalize the structure of the forums and beef up the moderator team of the message boards.