Rennsport – Revolutionary or Risky?

Rennsport has been on the minds of several high-profile esports teams of late, with the company introducing itself to the sim racing world with a publicity event late last year for their upcoming title. The Porsche-backed company made all the right noises and impressions with those that attended, the consensus is that the sim is “on the right track”. The sim is still in production, so that gives some wiggle room in the expectation level.

The Munich-based outfit isn’t done with grabbing the headlines with a positive event, they are organising a championship alongside the very experienced hands at ESL, with some very heavy hitters in the sim racing world taking part, such as Williams esports, R8G and Apex Racing Team. There have been drivers even changing teams in readiness for when Rennsport gets underway.

Manufacturer support, excellent skills of ESL and big names from esports taking part, sounds great. Rennsport’s Twitter account has been alive in the last couple of months with regular tweets about technical and graphic updates, and words from the CEO Morris Hebecker all showing strong signals for the title.

The more sceptical in the community have voiced concerns about the readiness of the product for what Rennsport has in mind, and the scale for which they are aiming. Rennsport makes no secret that they have very lofty aspirations for their title, but the sim hasn’t even reached a Closed Beta stage yet, and they are already generating a lot of interest for a sim racing series. With the issues that the sim racing world has faced in recent times, in particular with the backlash following Max Verstappens / Team Redline’s disconnection from the lead of Virtual LeMans this year, the last thing people want is a rushed project.

These concerns carry merit, as Rennsport is taking a huge risk in attracting so much attention to an unfinished product. Whilst the publicity event last year no doubt served as a valuable test session, with some highly experienced sim racers giving unique insight and guidance for areas to improve on, the Munich crew have sold the idea very well to the sim racing world to have attracted the teams to be taking part in the ESL run series.

The question has to be asked though, why do this on a sim that hasn’t even got to the beta stage of development yet? It’s understandable to be excited about a new sim entering the scene with huge potential, however, if the game isn’t ready then the backlash is going to be magnified by the amount of attention that Rennsport has gathered so far.

These concerns were further stirred by a tweet released by Rennsport on the 31st of January explaining that the closed beta has been delayed to resolve concerns regarding multiplayer servers, however, the ESL series seems to be going ahead, with the tweet going on to say that the series will provide “valuable insight that we will use to improve the current state of development”.

If the expectation level of the ESL series is set at “it’s not finished yet” and it still holds up well, Rennsport will have pulled a master stroke in providing a product at just the right time to gain more interest in sim racing and ignite new passion (and reignite old passion) for the genre, but if Rennsport hits big issues in this event, Rennsport could face a mountainous uphill battle to regain the trust of the sim racing world.