New Le Mans Game Coming December 2023

Le Mans Ultimate Header 2 Porsche 963.jpg
Image credit: Motorsport Games

We were promised a game for the 24 Hours of Le Mans back in mid 2021. It is now official, with Le Mans Ultimate set for a December 2023 release.

A couple of years ago, Motorsport Games and rFactor 2 developers Studio 397 announced they were developing an official standalone game of the World Endurance Championship and the 24 hours of Le Mans. With virtually no official word about the game since, many had reason to believe it would never come to be.

Other titles promised by Motorsport Games, such as one for the British Touring Car Championship and another for IndyCar, were delayed. This led to the community having fears about whether the game would ever see the light of day. However, those fears can now be put to rest with the announcement of Le Mans Ultimate.

What will be in Le Mans Ultimate?​

The game will immerse the player in the 2023 World Endurance Championship season. That means players can drive on all seven tracks: Monza, Spa-Francorchamps, Sebring, Bahrain, Portimão, Fuji and last but by no means least, the legendary Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans.

As for cars? Le Mans Ultimate will feature LMH and LMDh racers from Toyota, Ferrari, Porsche, Cadillac, Peugeot, Glickenhaus and Vanwall along with the Oreca 07 LMP2 and also Aston Martin, Corvette, Ferrari and Porsche GTE cars.

Le Mans Ultimate Ferrari 488 GTE.jpg

Le Mans Ultimate is coming this year. Image credit: Motorsport Games

There will be a feature called RaceControl, an innovative multiplayer service. It includes the ability to complete endurance races with friends via a collaborative asynchronous mode. But gamers who don’t want to compete in the online experience will also be accounted for with single player modes.

How to Play Le Mans Ultimate​

Motorsport Games have stated that the game will be PC-only for the first year at minimum. Content updates are expected in the second half of 2024. Afterwards, the developers will evaluate when the right time will be to bring the game to console.

With December 2023 expected to be the release window, sim racers can play the game early if they’re attending the 24 hours of Le Mans from 7-11 June. At the Circuit de la Sarthe, developers will be present, along with ten racing sims for fans and spectators to turn some laps. They can drive the Ferrari 488 GTE as well as the Porsche 963 LMDh, and can also provide feedback.

Before the release of the game, Le Mans Ultimate will be the new platform of the Le Mans Virtual Series. The first two full seasons and all three renditions of the 24 hours of Le Mans Virtual all took place on rFactor 2. The season will begin later this year, most likely in September like the previous two years.
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Luca [OT]
Biggest sim racing esports fan in the world.

Comments

I expect the release date to be the same as the BTCC and Indycar games...

2050...
Then I am curious about what they are going to use coming weekend at Le Mans. Will they just use rF2 with its existing WEC content, or an alpha version of the new game?
 
Just surprised about how recycled content is seen. The point of a new game is not about new cars, it is about a new polished experience. You paid 15, 20 euros for content for a 10 years old game? A bottle of whisky / rhum / tequila / chose your drink. And you have spent hundreds of hours on it??? Seriously just stop simracing and even gaming. That's ridiculous and there isn't any place for an argument there.

Simbin games have been based on rfactor, several games ans dlcs came put, it was normal. Who would have consideres GTR evolution just a steal because we had GTR2? That was so stupid, and still is. And stock cars extreme and AMS1 are just Race / GTR2 / rfactor rip off ???

I just think rfactor2 badly educated its users by trying to be opened for modding and DLCs during 10 years. It is easy to say but it was a unique situation when S397 took the game. Good decisions were made to support the game but it created bad customers. The ones knew what they bought with the state of the sim. Now S397 aims to deliver a better product, with MSG inputs, for a better experience. This is how gaming developpers have always been working. That's positive.
 
hmmmm.. i opened up the KartKraft game a bit back to rip the tracks and stumbled into this BTCC folder in it, was thinking they might release this next, so i guess not,
1686125460270.png
 
I do like the graphics in RF2 for all new DLC, but if they can further improve the car light reflections on cars for night racing and during those transitions to morning and evening it will be amazing.
 
Premium
WHY oh Why Please tell ME why we have to suffer with the Biggest POS developer ever to Exists. And YES I mean MOTORSPORTS GAMES. The reason it will be a Le Mans only game is so that they can repackage rFactor 2 in time to get this out for Christmas sales. Motorsports games doesn't give a dam about making a quality product. The release date will tell you that DECEMBER 2023. These pieces of **** developers only care about taking your hard earned cash so that the small dick developers can by themselves a super car to make up for their short comings as humans beings.

I wouldn't install this game if they gave it away. What really sucks in that the WEC and or the LeMans 24hr has sold these tools the rights to make shitty games based on the WEC and LeMans 24hr. Just look at the games the have develop such as Nascar Ignition 21 - Holy **** could there be a bigger pile of dog **** than this game.

It really sucks that they bought rFactor2 and try to pass it off like they had something to do with it.

GREED is the worst trait that us humans have. When the pandemic hit and racing online exploded, these scum sucking bottom feeders saw an opportunity to make money off of something they know nothing about or even care about.
 
WHY oh Why Please tell ME why we have to suffer with the Biggest POS developer ever to Exists. And YES I mean MOTORSPORTS GAMES. The reason it will be a Le Mans only game is so that they can repackage rFactor 2 in time to get this out for Christmas sales. Motorsports games doesn't give a dam about making a quality product. The release date will tell you that DECEMBER 2023. These pieces of **** developers only care about taking your hard earned cash so that the small dick developers can by themselves a super car to make up for their short comings as humans beings.

I wouldn't install this game if they gave it away. What really sucks in that the WEC and or the LeMans 24hr has sold these tools the rights to make shitty games based on the WEC and LeMans 24hr. Just look at the games the have develop such as Nascar Ignition 21 - Holy **** could there be a bigger pile of dog **** than this game.

It really sucks that they bought rFactor2 and try to pass it off like they had something to do with it.

GREED is the worst trait that us humans have. When the pandemic hit and racing online exploded, these scum sucking bottom feeders saw an opportunity to make money off of something they know nothing about or even care about.
:D:D:D
 
Just surprised about how recycled content is seen. The point of a new game is not about new cars, it is about a new polished experience. You paid 15, 20 euros for content for a 10 years old game? A bottle of whisky / rhum / tequila / chose your drink. And you have spent hundreds of hours on it??? Seriously just stop simracing and even gaming. That's ridiculous and there isn't any place for an argument there.

Simbin games have been based on rfactor, several games ans dlcs came put, it was normal. Who would have consideres GTR evolution just a steal because we had GTR2? That was so stupid, and still is. And stock cars extreme and AMS1 are just Race / GTR2 / rfactor rip off ???

I just think rfactor2 badly educated its users by trying to be opened for modding and DLCs during 10 years. It is easy to say but it was a unique situation when S397 took the game. Good decisions were made to support the game but it created bad customers. The ones knew what they bought with the state of the sim. Now S397 aims to deliver a better product, with MSG inputs, for a better experience. This is how gaming developpers have always been working. That's positive.


You should count to 10 before you post, give your mouth a chance.
 
For me to pick this up it needs good sim/ffb (rf2 so thats a given) but i also need great sound. Powerful and detailed with grunt, bass, shifting and downshift sounds. When its just one type of race i need everything else to be great. Not that anyone cares nut those are my thoughts.
 
WHY oh Why Please tell ME why we have to suffer with the Biggest POS developer ever to Exists. And YES I mean MOTORSPORTS GAMES. The reason it will be a Le Mans only game is so that they can repackage rFactor 2 in time to get this out for Christmas sales. Motorsports games doesn't give a dam about making a quality product. The release date will tell you that DECEMBER 2023. These pieces of **** developers only care about taking your hard earned cash so that the small dick developers can by themselves a super car to make up for their short comings as humans beings.

I wouldn't install this game if they gave it away. What really sucks in that the WEC and or the LeMans 24hr has sold these tools the rights to make shitty games based on the WEC and LeMans 24hr. Just look at the games the have develop such as Nascar Ignition 21 - Holy **** could there be a bigger pile of dog **** than this game.

It really sucks that they bought rFactor2 and try to pass it off like they had something to do with it.

GREED is the worst trait that us humans have. When the pandemic hit and racing online exploded, these scum sucking bottom feeders saw an opportunity to make money off of something they know nothing about or even care about.
Can't disagree with the basic points made here. Do we know if WEC/LeMans was as stupid as Indycar by signing a contact with MSG that includes an unnecessary and ruinous (for us, the sim racing community) exclusivity clause?
 
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Can't disagree with the basic points made here. Do we know if WEC/LeMans was as stupid as Indycar by signing a contact with MSG that includes an unnecessary and ruinous (for us, the sim racing community) exclusivity clause?
To agree or disagree with something there atleast should be some basic understanding of the information provided. MSG isn't developing LMU, it's S397 according to the press release. It's like saying you don't like FIFA because EA f*cked up BF2042. It was DICE who did that with the help of a few other studios. And there is no exclusivity deal between FIA WEC/Le Mans and MSG. People are throwing around with stuff not really understanding what is happening. ACO signed a deal with MSG, so that they could publish a game featuring the official FIA WEC season aswell as running the official Le mans Virtual. It's the exact same thing what SRO did with 505 games. Exactly the same scope.

Now please be honest to yourself: has this affected us sim racers in any form negatively or even been ruinous for us? Nope. And you know why? Because you can drive GT3 cars basicly in any sim and host your own 24 Hours of Spa, just with a different event name. How does it come that there has been hosted a 24 Hour race at Le Mans a couple of days ago that featured a hypercar that will run in Le Mans next year using iRacing? Want to have more of that Le Mans fix? How about getting the Caddy Hypercar in iRacing? People should really stop with that panicking.
 
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Can't disagree with the basic points made here. Do we know if WEC/LeMans was as stupid as Indycar by signing a contact with MSG that includes an unnecessary and ruinous (for us, the sim racing community) exclusivity clause?
WEC has signed a deal with MSG, no other game will have the WEC, but they can have cars and tracks, like ACC and SRO btw. Its mainly the official copyrighted/protected naming, i.e. the 24h of Le Mans, you can run it still, cant be the 24h of Le Mans tho, that name isnt allowed and technically never was.

The thing about Indycar is the content is also available, its not gone away nor will it, its again only the name thats gone, about some of the restriction iRacing imposed on their users, I am not sure how reliable their info is, other games can run Indycars like they want without issues (Forza has some for example).
 
WEC is indeed an exclusive deal. That still means other studios can have the LM track or other tracks slated for LMU or the cars directly from the manufacturers.
However the effect of the exclusivity, especially with MSG being prone to unleash lawyers at every corner of the road, is still there, because having a too high number of WEC tracks in a sim with a too high number of cars belonging to WEC is still something that may get another developer sued and in trouble.
On top of this, there are the restriction MSG has imposed on iracing and their users banning them not only from "officially" organizing servers with Indy 500 names but also private leagues from streaming their leagues using that combo. There is no reasons why the same will not be applied in the context of WEC (which already happened again with iracing a few years ago when the 24 H of Le Mans was changed into 24 H of the French Countryside suddenly before the weekend of the event).
Looking at this, obviously there is a strong deterrent for other developers from investing big money on Le Mans and LMH licenses and then find themselves sued or their biggest users (leagues) harassed by lawyers and ultimately losing money on it.
Also stating that LMU is not MSG's is laughable: it's only reputation washing. They put S397 up front and no mention of MSG because MSG reputation is the worst in the history of simracing right now. Everywhere you go on forums, socials etc MSG is highly despised by the vast majority of simracers atm.
So it's really nothing more than marketing.
All of those licenses are under the name of MSG, the announcements were made under the name of MSG and with their socials. Let's not talk BS.
 
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A title like this must have a functional system of Safety Cars and Full Course Yellow Flags. I'm curious to know how they'll manage this since the current RF2 engine (which is the supposedly system to be running on background) is completely broken in this regard and, above all, if they have fixed that aspect at this point why in Earth they didn't retrofit to the very RF2 game engine itself.

Just questions.
 
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Great news but i prefer a WEC DLC for Rf2, why a new sim? We got a great one on Rf2 and could cool with this DLC
 
WEC is indeed an exclusive deal. That still means other studios can have the LM track or other tracks slated for LMU or the cars directly from the manufacturers.
However the effect of the exclusivity, especially with MSG being prone to unleash lawyers at every corner of the road, is still there, because having a too high number of WEC tracks in a sim with a too high number of cars belonging to WEC is still something that may get another developer sued and in trouble.
On top of this, there are the restriction MSG has imposed on iracing and their users banning them not only from "officially" organizing servers with Indy 500 names but also private leagues from streaming their leagues using that combo. There is no reasons why the same will not be applied in the context of WEC (which already happened again with iracing a few years ago when the 24 H of Le Mans was changed into 24 H of the French Countryside suddenly before the weekend of the event).
Looking at this, obviously there is a strong deterrent for other developers from investing big money on Le Mans and LMH licenses and then find themselves sued or their biggest users (leagues) harassed by lawyers and ultimately losing money on it.
Also stating that LMU is not MSG's is laughable: it's only reputation washing. They put S397 up front and no mention of MSG because MSG reputation is the worst in the history of simracing right now. Everywhere you go on forums, socials etc MSG is highly despised by the vast majority of simracers atm.
So it's really nothing more than marketing.
All of those licenses are under the name of MSG, the announcements were made under the name of MSG and with their socials. Let's not talk BS.
And were are those examples of MSG unleashing their thousends of lawyers? The only thing I heard was iRacing changing their event names - mimimi - a pretty dumb statement from iRacing that got corrected by Indycar and Reiza not being able to release the IR18 due to Indycar not giving it a go after they tried to release a car that they had no lisence for. Who would have expected that? The rest are videos of people sharing opinions.

Ofcourse MSG has the lisences and money, same as 505 is holding the lisences for ACC and not Kunos. Some people have a very wierd way of overcomplicating things. S397 is developing this product no matter how hard some people try to twist it. And it's pretty clear who is involved in wich way in this product development. No need to pull out the tinfoil hat and interpret things the way you like it.
 
And were are those examples of MSG unleashing their thousends of lawyers? The only thing I heard was iRacing changing their event names - mimimi - a pretty dumb statement from iRacing that got corrected by Indycar and Reiza not being able to release the IR18 due to Indycar not giving it a go after they tried to release a car that they had no lisence for. Who would have expected that? The rest are videos of people sharing opinions.

Ofcourse MSG has the lisences and money, same as 505 is holding the lisences for ACC and not Kunos. Some people have a very wierd way of overcomplicating things. S397 is developing this product no matter how hard some people try to twist it. And it's pretty clear who is involved in wich way in this product development. No need to pull out the tinfoil hat and interpret things the way you like it.
iracing already twice (for LM24 and Indy 500), Nils Heusinkveld when he did a not do positive review of their software on YT. Probably more that I don't know of and I CBA to search for.
Like I said, luckily, despite all the lawyers and exclusives, talented developers will still offer enjoyable software with that content and hopefully the bullies will go belly up soon and let go of the simracing world to people who actually care about it.
 

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