Le Mans Ultimate will be released in Early Access via Steam on February 20th 2024 on PC.
We’re thrilled to bring the next evolution of our much-loved racing platform to a passionate sim racing audience. Our intent is for Le Mans Ultimate to become an indispensable gem in the Steam libraries of every sim racer. But to deliver on this commitment, we need opinion, input and activity to take the next step on this journey, with our players.
Following on from the recent positive experience of running a public ‘beta’ program for the rFactor 2 online experience, bug reports and feedback from an engaged community has helped us improve the back-end systems deployed for RaceControl, and Studio 397 are excited about involving the community further with Le Mans Ultimate.
The Early Access period will allow us to work through our internal roadmap, with some known features coming to the game that we’ll let racers know about upfront and others that we hope to surprise and delight fans with. Most importantly, however, is our desire to listen and receive feedback from the community so that we can create the best possible sportscar experience for fans of the genre.
From the outset players will have the opportunity to experience the drama of a weekend at any of the 2023 season race tracks, configurable to include Practice, Qualifying and Race sessions or simply build a Quick Race via the offline Race Weekend feature. Determine the classes competing on track, configure the weather simulation options, including rain and full day-to-night transitions.
Players will also have the opportunity to jump into the online experience, powered by RaceControl. Initially taking part in Daily Races against other players from around the world – whilst building their Driver and Safety Rank. Proving their ability will unlock higher level races, ensuring you face an appropriately skilled grid each time you join. In time, RaceControl will host more complex event types, particular to endurance racing all the way through to high-profile esport events.
Significant work has gone into the evolution of this racing technology to ensure it can be the foundation for an authentic, enjoyable and usable platform, for a wide range of players to begin their FIA WEC journey.
Sim racers will be able to drive all the cars from the 2023 FIA WEC season, 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans (excluding the innovative car) and all seven fabled Hypercars from the centenary season. There are over 100 livery variations to choose from across the 12 cars, whilst all seven official circuits from that season have been recreated in incredible detail, laser scanned and prepared to host equivalent GTE, LMP2 and Hypercar categories in an in-depth driving experience.
Right now, we aren’t able to say exactly how long this game will be in Early Access for. We have clear internal requirements and quality standards we need to meet for the game to be considered full release These include functionality as well as content with community sentiment playing a significant role in our decision making.
We may find that the community offers feedback or feature ideas we consider to be too important to omit from a full release or that certain features take longer to develop than previously expected.
Unfortunately, whilst we do have a working prototype, of this innovative game mode is not quite ready for release and such we are working hard on this feature with the intent on making it available in the summer during the Early Access phase.
We’ve been having a great time testing and racing asynchronously – completing endurance events with our colleagues and we can’t wait to bring this to you too very soon!
Yes, there will be online multiplayer events available from day one. The RaceControl powered multiplayer experience will offer Daily Races, separated into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced access points, with all three using a variety of class content from the GTE, LMP2 and Hypercar classes.
We don’t yet have a hosted server option to run your own races, but this is coming!
For those who purchase the product on day one the price will be £24.99 GBP / €29.99 EUR / $32.99 USD.
The initial offering for the game will be the lowest price for the game in its Early Access phase. Those early adopters will enjoy playing the game early with access to features and content, whilst also helping input into the future roadmap of the product with new features and updates being delivered to players when they are ready as part of the initial price. We also hope to even have a few gifts or two throughout Early Access. Keep your eyes peeled!
As the game grows with more features, the price of the title will increase gradually to reflect the content and feature set in the game for any new fans who want to join the Le Mans Ultimate community.
Please note: future content updates outside of Early Access may require additional DLC.
A first for Studio 397, Le Mans Ultimate will be the offering localised versions of the title with English, French, Spanish, Italian and German natively supported at launch which we hope will open the title to brand new audiences.
The following specifications have been set by the development team:
MINIMUM:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 10 or 11 with latest Service Packs
- Processor: Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD FX-8120
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: nVidia GeForce GTX 950 or AMD Radeon RX 470
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 30 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
- *Additional Notes: To run on minimal settings at 1080p
RECOMMENDED:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 10 or 11 with latest Service Packs
- Processor: Intel Core i5-9600 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB, Radeon RX 580 8GB
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 30 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
- *Additional Notes: To run on default settings at 1080p
The game will launch on PC in Early Access on Steam – we are actively exploring the opportunity to bring this experience to console. Currently, our focus is only on developing the PC version.
There is certainly a huge amount of current and historic inspiration to draw from! We’ll be sharing more about our initial post-release plans in the coming days and weeks.
In order to build on the strengths of a widely respected sim racing codebase, we had to make tough decisions on what to bring into the new product. Inevitably we were faced with making the call on what met our requirements for a future platform and what needed further work before being released. Le Mans Ultimate shares a lot of the rFactor 2 framework, but it is a new title designed to be expanded with content and features during its lifetime including innovations not yet revealed, but likely to integrate with RaceControl.
Yes! The way controllers work in Le Mans Ultimate has been reworked compared to past Studio 397 titles with the aim of making the game as accessible as possible and also bringing vibration support.
For now, menus are accessible only using a keyboard and mouse but we plan to revisit this in future.
The new online system used in Le Mans Ultimate features Driver and Safety Ranks, making a great foundation for future wide-scale competitions on the title. We’ve got some great plans to run championships and esports tournaments in the future and are building out functionality to create online championships and more.
There are no current plans to support modded content on Le Mans Ultimate.
All the latest news will be shared across our website www.lemansultimate.com and social media channels @LeMansUltimate
Our community and marketing team will closely be monitoring feedback on social media, Discord and our new forum that are due to go live ahead of release. These outlets will also provide a point for support – with fixes and patch information. We are also considering ‘feedback events’ for specific periods as well as further activations at WEC events. Additionally, as we share more roadmap information, we know the users will be giving us great information on what they would most like to see so that we can investigate and prioritise those.
The game can be Wishlisted on Steam right now and you will be able to purchase the game on Steam on the 20th February. The link to do both will be here – https://bit.ly/LeMansUltimateOnSteam.
