Motorsport Games Explains Le Mans Ultimate DLC and Cancelled IndyCar Game - CEO interview

Le Mans Ultimate's DLC and possible subscription extras. What happened to the IndyCar Game? The rebirth of Motorsport Games. Your questions answered (consoles, VR, co-op within LMU). Stephen Hood, CEO, discusses this and more in this Traxion Podcast episode.
It's Motorsport Games unleashed, no holds barred.
The BTCC relationship, a possible rFactor 3 and a single-player career for Le Mans Ultimate.
Discuss in the comments below, on our Discord or via social. Let us know which other developers you'd like to hear from in future episodes.
This is a pilot episode of a new podcast series, set to start on a later date, joining forces with Sim Sundays! Enjoy episode one of "Under the Hood" where we speak to the game development industry.
00:00 - 02:46 Welcome!
02:46 - 08:36 Le Mans Ultimate reception
08:36 - 12:42 Motorsport Games perception
12:42 - 17:04 Falling player numbers
17:04 - 20:45 LMU update cadence, roadmap
20:45 - 27:17 LMU DLC, Early Access, pricing
27:17 - 30:32 Le Mans Virtual Series
30:32 - 34:59 rFactor 2 and 3
34:59 - 40:24 Subscriptions
40:24 - 42:18 BTCC and new rF2 content
42:18 - 49:59 IndyCar game failings
49:59 - 54:00 LMU on consoles
54:00 - 56:06 LMU VR
56:06 - 1:01:51 Leaving early access
1:01:51 - 1:02:50 Garage 56
1:02:50 - 1:04:04 Classic cars
1:04:04 - 1:05:50 Career mode
1:05:50 - 1:08:25 Mid-session saves, replays
1:08:25 - 1:11:14 KartKraft
------------------------
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#Traxion #LeMansUltimate #SimRacing

[@deanothemanc5281]

Good interview that. Fair play you asked Steven some direct questions, which he didnt steer from. Motorsport games biggest mistake was not initially utilising their biggest asset (studio 397). However i do feel they've learnt their lesson, certainly the buying of every licence on the planet didnt make them popular, but LMU has impressed me. They might just turn it around, 6 months ago i wouldn't have thought that.

[@ThomasHarrisonLord]

Thank you for watching!

[@OldManPlaysDrivingSims]

What an incredibly interesting interview - Steven seems like a genuinely good bloke who is passionate not just about LMU, but sim racing in general…he talks about playing these titles when younger, and still today.

[@youp1tralala]

Incredible interview with great in-depth answers from M. Hood, never side-stepping difficult questions. It really illustrates how difficult it is to make a modern sim with the myriad of tradeoffs that have to be made. And that game developers are often the highest critics of their own work. I really wishes S397 the best !

[@ThomasHarrisonLord]

Thank you!

[@TraxionGG]

Thank you for listening!

[@FL981S]

Something like the Forza 8 Premium edition is $99. I'm $32 into LMU. I don't have an issue paying for the DLC and updates to a degree. I still have a $40-60 difference compared to a "complete" game. I've been enjoying LMU for the last 2 weeks(even though I've crashed a lottt of Hypercars). The real shame is the optimization, lack of, or whatever on the Le Mans track. I can't avoid a CTD at Le Mans with all 3 classes with settings turned down but I can run 2 classes on a mix of high and ultra. That said, I'm looking foward to the new content and continued refinement.

[@jamesbryant8133]

Well iv enjoyed LMU but I don't want it to become like Iracing. Iv recently got AC working and figured out mods. LFM has been a blast. LMU is a interesting project, I just hope perfectionism doesn't ruin the community

[@jamesbryant8133]

Oh wow, you mentioned my 'extreme detail' question 😳 Glad it raised a smile 😃 I am very happy with his answer over race control. I started sim racing just after Iracing hiked it's prices and felt priced out. Tried it, not worth it. Was really worried I was going to buy into LMU then next year get priced out. Also agree about its a shame about BTCC. Hope they can do something.

[@RossAlexanderSmith]

Finally got to sit down and watch this. Everything Stephen Hood was saying regarding directions of the studio/team and the titles are almost exactly what I'd been saying to people would likely be the direction. It's good to see good business sense steering the ship now. A shame Hood's guiding hand couldn't have been allowed to work more from the beginning to avoid some of the silly things we saw in the interim. Great interview and great insight into how things are going. I hope they keep getting the support they need to continue developing great products.

[@Davidizzleb]

That was a good interview and it was nice to hear honest answers as well. Looking forward to what LMU is bringing to simracing.

[@TraxionGG]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@martsum398]

I love the engine LMU is on, visuals, audio... it's all on-point for me.

[@SwitchedOn]

Great show, really enjoyed this. Steven was very articulate and interesting and as a huge LMU fan it was great to hear some backstory and plans for the future. Thanks for putting this together guys!

[@the.bavarian]

Thanks for the great interview! I am happy to hear that reasonable people are steering the boat of MSG.

[@xXxXENcoreXxXx]

Great interview. I respect him for coming up and also try to explain his plans and keep in touch with the audiences and listen to their need. Hopefully, they will improve the physics better. All the best, I wish you luck and success. Keep it up.

[@AnotherWatchChannel]

I’m on console (PS5) as a sim racer, purely cuz I’m lazy and don’t want to fiddle with everything, I like to get to racing within minutes of turning it on. So if this comes to console I’ll be buying day 1. All I play now is ACC, and F124. ACC is leagues ahead of any sim racing game on console.

[@APLFilms1]

still play project cars 2 and assetto

[@TheBombDiggity69420]

I can be in a race in iRacing or LMU within minutes of turning it on. Console is awful for sim racing, PC all day.

[@BrianReese]

Yeah, I'm with you. I occasionally race on PC, but my PS5 happens to be a lot more convenient right now. It feels like more quality options for console would be well received.

[@definitely_not_nick41]

I think LMU will have a good future, S397 and MSG have made a pretty solid sim to work with, the progress is steady and it’s getting there. It has huge potential to do well

[@christophercao3671]

As Someone who just purchased LMU this week and was curious on when new content specifically career mode would come out, this interview answered my question and far more and has excited me for whats to come with LMU. I have played F1 games, Forza, ACC etc and am really impressed with LMU and how good it is already only being early access. As someone who has played ACC i can say that LMU to me has so much more potential and keeps me playing more already in the state its in more than ACC does. The audio in LMU is most likely the best ive ever heard when it comes to authentic Hypercars, LMP2 etc. Hats off to Motorsport Games and Studio 397 for making a great game and look forward to the full release of the game .

[@layingblacklines]

It's funny how out of rF2, iRacing and ACC I think rF2 has the best VR. In terms of performance and graphics quality. That said you do get weird things like mirrored loading screens. Be interesting to see what the eventual VR implementation will look like if my current favourite implementation is not fit for purpose for LMU. Exciting.

[@chriskross1660]

the vr is great in rF2, I use this long time now. in ams2 the VR is very nice !! and in iRacing it works great too. But I like fpr me only rF2 and VR. it's a great driving feeling

[@VirtuaIceMan]

I'd be interested in knowing if BTCC might get any more circuits too, or whether Workshop community content is the only way that will happen.

[@ronknox3376]

Very insightful but I was disappointed that no one asked about A.I. co-drivers which was there and taken away. I simply wanted to know if it would return at some point. Preferably soon. The save and resume mode will be good but I want to experience what an endurance driver experiences which is large periods of time when you are at the mercy of your co-drivers for a good result.

[@fedebe8977]

I'm happy to support in my own small way a great product like LMU which has great opportunities, I got it on EA and I will also buy all the DLCs and subscriptions, good work guys!

[@danardisimracing]

I have LMU and I run it on a reasonably powerful gaming laptop, that can run ACC and AMS2 very well at 60fps in 4k. With LMU it is still not nearly as well optimised and I can really only run time trial type sessions with small amounts of cars on track. I would love to see the kind of optimisation that allows the game to run as well as the other titles mentioned. As a driving experience it's fantastic.

[@BadWallaby]

Honestly can say an IndyCar game similar to the Codemasters F1 series would be mint. I just know it will never happen.

[@misterdog7]

Stephen has his priorities straight and I totally agree on not throwing in half arsed features but making sure they are of a high standard before you release them. Just look at how bad VR in WRC works atm, that was quite a bummer.,,

[@giogamer4825]

Great interview and happy we could see Console edition in the future. My DD wheel on console is ready for it

[@TraxionGG]

Thank you!

[@giogamer4825]

@@TraxionGG I hope you guys can have a talk with Kunos about the (Ended?) Future of ACC and roadmap for AC Evo?

[@01Peebee10]

Excellent interview. Myself, along with numerous members of the sim racing group I'm part of all agree that if Le Mans Ultimate continues to progress like it is, it could potentially be an ACC killer.

[@EnjailleuR]

acc has been there since 2018 so 6 years this year logically it's the last year before konus on assetto corsa evo so.... we can say that acc is almost dead

[@BoxBoxBoxGaming]

big love for SHood. great guy.

[@aplxxxi5586]

Garage56 NASCAR on LMU would be a dream come true.

[@simong5321]

Thanks very much for this. Any input about an upcoming damage model ? I guess it will be considered at some stage but it has never been talked about so far.

[@alkallata80]

Mr. Hood if you read these words I still don't understand how race control in rfactor 2 contain good reviews and such a good game system for rf2 they did not want to increase the number of races in silver and gold sr. I hope that in the not too distant future they want to expand more races in race control

[@virtual_GaRy]

53:00 probably going so deep into the technology and the renderer to then convert to console will also open the door to get rid of outdated practices, replace deprecated gpu commands, find optimisation opportunities and so on, to improve performance on modern hardware, and perhaps move to directX12.

[@Emir_de_Passy]

Great interview. This guy really seems to have his head on his shoulders. Happy to see TraxionGG back as well.

[@a_sousa7]

joint venture with RaceRoom and all platforms release

[@danmorgan4481]

Try the nascar thing again! Try again? How about sanctioned official license depending/affecting races with stock cars!!! I LOVE the sim!

[@RacingWithChuck27]

People crying about a subscription. How do you expect a company to grow and be around for a long time without continuous revenue. You spend more money on Starbucks monthly than you would on a subscription lol “you get what you pay for” How much has each person invested in their pc, rig?

[@soccersensation]

Great interview. I've been considering this game for a few weeks now but haven't purchased it as yet. I can see my self getting it in the near future. Not sure if I missed it but will this game have some kind of protest system like iRacing does? I think all new and upcoming racing sims should have this in place. Having spent my hard earn money, I expect to have good racing without someone intentionally causing havoc. Yes accidents will still happen, that's a part of the sport, but some of the incidences I've seen and experienced is uncalled for. One thing I would change about the way iRacing handles it, is that the outcome of the review should be known to both parties. I think iRacing is too lenient when it comes to "punishment" for intentionally causing a crash. In some cases, the person is still seen accessing the game after the outcome.

[@6665hitm4k3r]

There is a reporting system in place allready and the devs take care of it. ;)

[@rickswanracing3139]

I absolutely love LMU as someone coming from Iracing and a smattering of ACC. The replay feature I am very interested in. As a KZbin content creator the replay feature is very important for my product. I record driver POV and Dashcams with two GoPro's in my enclosed cockpit and then merge them with the sim replay as a TV feed, thus i get all three views. If you were able to create a highlights replay mode that easily merged with my GoPro footage, maybe even AI race commentary somehow... that would be utterly amazing. Better yet, a feature within LMU that somehow was able to bring in other video inputs could be interesting. I am very impressed with LMU thus far. Maybe in the future adding other series such as European or Asian Lemans would broaden the variety of competition. To be honest the main feature that keeps me in Iracing is the track variety, so that I would argue is a big goal for LMU is to offer a large variety of tracks to keep it fresh.

[@javalinjav]

Rick, if you are a “content creator” I am a movie star.

[@rickswanracing3139]

@@javalinjav um… congrats?

[@RacingWithChuck27]

So rf2 is going to sit idle until they can make LMU successful. Makes sense to get the company out of the red

[@laurentespert1205]

Look at the poster behind, Senna vs Mansell 1992, this shows how he loves real racing and real drivers ultimately this produced a real sim...by far the best to me

[@RacingWithChuck27]

Currently and rf2 netcode is sooo much better than iracing. To make it better, that’s pretty amazing. One thing I’d like to see is a better feel when you make contact and also a message like irwcing does, x1 x2 etc… Also Old lemans content would be awesome, GT1 98 Evo for one! 😊

[@kylemanning193]

I do hope it makes to console!!! Thank you for asking

[@murrayhyslop9263]

Video gaming pricing is complicated when dealing with a neach market.... Witcher 3 I play alot of the game is almost 10 years old but I play it alot. That game is worth the price of admision 4x over to me. I would pay that happily today. I like racing games, its a small market compared to say a fifa or 2k game. I am happy to pay more for a racing game that i like.... GT7 or forza could easily kill a game like LMU but they don't get there potential/ fan base. LMU is a game i would support yearly for as long as I live because I enjoy the type of racing, and they do a good job recreating that experiance.

[@jonathangarbutt4682]

How on earth did they drop the ball with the BTCC license!!!! Not good

[@old-simracing-rookie]

23:51 NO!! Thats something what makes LMU different then other sims. You as dev and studio team / company with all people and with alll cars great engineered before they were put in the game… that should never change. The quality needs time, tests, retesting, as you said, having other great guys and less great - me… providing the feedback or like with bmw hy… asking drivers ti test… this needs time but please dont start too do releases too fast just cause gamers want it. The ones who want it - can have it outside lmu. Unfortunate ppl who cry about few cents for a dlc because its „ooh noo“ early access dont think first how much costs the company has each months… just starting with electricity and infrastructure… Or scanners if you do it yourself… i read how much it can cost when you hire the company to do it… I dont care about the numbers but maybe you should put how many people it takes and how many hours of work and how much it costs do deliver the quality. so i had to write this down before i forget it. Ps: 29:15 Netcode has netcode+ version… i dont know which one is in the game. Maybe it sounds less interessting but… 😅

[@Werferharfer]

I just need a champiship mode, that's enough for me to play the game.

[@joegulli3691]

so this means the heat 5 servers arent coming back?

[@againstall4agsandtrans511]

Propper online ranking system and you have won

[@WarmRed77]

When will TrackIr5 support finally be added to the game?

[@ciaranconnor4466]

Loved the game when released despite the bugs, but they lost me with the, non-generic, game assists they ran which made participants faster. Will never play if game assists make a sim faster, should be slower if needed to promote player base numbers. Great product but a seriously flawed sim.

[@fedebe8977]

there is a weight penalty for using assists, i am slower with assists

[@ciaranconnor4466]

@@fedebe8977 I had heard about the initial ballast, but that game assists were still faster? Maybe they’ve updated the ballast model again since then?

[@fedebe8977]

@@ciaranconnor4466 the ballast is updated at every hotfix, now i can say that personally i'm faster without assists, at least 0.5 sec with lmdh at bahrain, if you don't know in intermediate races people can use only low assists and in advance there are no assists.

[@javalinjav]

So we are all just going to pretend this isn’t a reskin of RF2?

[@PlayJasch]

kinda, polished up rf2. Well rip to all the RF2 DLC. Traxxion is/was owned by motorsports games till may 2024. So they interviewed their chef/ex. AI is coming, better buy some shares. Well I like IMSA so I hope they do succeed.

[@BMD8]

As long as subscriptions don't enter the chat I'm on board. Paying to play should not be a thing. Only paying to own.

[@MrBlingclean]

All you have to do is run MSI afterburner to monitor your hardware performance and the game crash

[@Mogzilla86]

FIX KARTKRAFT

[@LeviJM]

There's no team to work on it, not a single person that worked on kartkraft is still with MSG, who now own the title.

[@danmorgan4481]

So you guys sold nascar to iracing? I guess that means that yall had the rights and sold them to iracing? I never knew this part of the story. Interwebsnrabbitholes here I come, lol.

[@regibson23]

This guy is so full of crap. The only true thing he said is that there's no creative director. Which is pretty damn obvious.

[@TheDrSwank]

He’s taking credit for everything. Me me me. A true leader takes credit for nothing.

[@nitro-rc6241]

In his fairness since he’s took over he’s done great things, but I do agree

[@joaolima1030]

I don't give a fuck if he says he I just want a good gamr

[@db-mp2of]

"We are Studio 397" doesn't sound like you say

[@joaolima1030]

@@db-mp2of he is trying to create a fire where is none

[@zeekot4064]

Hahahahhaha tf is wrong with you ? 😂

[@stevemichael9576]

So a championship mode will arrive 'some point'... And 'it is something people have been asking about since the RF2 days'... Is he kidding? Rfactor 2 has been out for over 10 years! Oh and they had a 'roadmap meeting yesterday' and it was 'discussed'. I think its safe to say we will NOT be seeing a championship mode in LMU for the foreseeable future! I'm sure glad i got my refund from steam after my 1 hour 59 minute trial. I'll check again in couple of years to see where things are. Assetto Corsa 2 can't come soon enough already.

[@zeekot4064]

Brother , are you just taking a few minutes out of the podcast and running with it ? Did you not listen to anything else he said before that ? Lmao

[@stevemichael9576]

@@zeekot4064 actually no. Don’t have one hour plus to listen to the entire thing unfortunately! Did he say anything else I missed. I was specifically looking for his answer about a championship mode and found it.

[@paulomatias3]

😂​@@stevemichael9576

[@anthcesana]

@@stevemichael9576 But you sure have time to sit here and tell us your complaints when the information you seek may very well be at your fingertips.

[@stevemichael9576]

@@anthcesana the video has chapters for a reason. I went to the one specifically about championship/ career mode. What I typed above was the words from Mr Motorsport games. Good luck to the peeps who bought LMU. Let’s hope it’s not another 10 year wait for a championship mode!

[@joshuataylor5313]

So wait. Last week you guys post a whole video about how you were let go and reformed and are independent of msg. Now you're first content video is an apology/fluff piece by the guy now running the company that told you to go pound rocks? Yes you asked hard questions but this an obvious fluff piece. Yall are really nice to a company that fired you and drove every great racing franchise people want into the ground leaving us as consumers without a product for years. Whatever.

[@juanesteban8827]

The developers should be ashamed of the fact they're charging people for LMU. Literally, Rennsport is a better experience and it was free! Side note; I've given LMU 79 hrs of today and it just gets worse every time. Poor physics engine, crashes every 10 minutes....I could go on and on

[@db-mp2of]

Well, that's just like your opinion man

[@joaolima1030]

rennsport OMEGALUL AHAHHA

[@EnjailleuR]

rennsport a joke jacket ''homemade'' physics engine 2 months later an rf2 modder opens files as if by chance the same line of code as rf2.... with Qatari money + graphics engine not made for simracing so good..... #AFUERA !

[@jamesbryant8133]

Sounds like your rig is pretty shoddy if it crashes every 10. Iv not had a crash in ages apart from trying to force VR because it wanted all my ram.

[@zeekot4064]

Cheapo