Spintires: MudRunner edition headed to PC and consoles
Existing owners will have to rebuy - but get a discount.
All-terrain driving sim Spintires is getting a new version for PC and will also launch on console for the first time.
Owners of the original Spintires will have to buy this new version, dubbed Spintires: MudRunner, separately, albeit at a discount.
A console version of Spintires has felt likely for some time. The announcement of MudRunner for PC as a separate entity from the original game, however, is more surprising.
MudRunner is described by its new publisher Focus Home Interactive as the "ultimate version of the million-seller hit". New features include a Siberian sandbox map which ties together previous areas, graphical tweaks and physics engine improvements.
Spintires owners can get MudRunner for half price, on top of the 10 per cent discount offered if you pre-order the game. (Its price, and Steam pre-orders, will go live shortly.)
I spoke to Spintires studio Oovee in early 2016 and chatted at length about the bumpy course of its game's development. The chat was prompted by fan concerns that Spintires was not being kept updated, and fears that Spintires' original Russian programmer Pavel Zagrebelnyy had quit the project after a bust up over money.
Fast forward a year and here we are. As recently as this week, Spintires players were still leaving Steam reviews complaining that the game had been abandoned and still needed finishing. Clearly, work was being ploughed into the standalone Mudrunners update instead.
I spoke to Oovee again today and the studio assured me that Pavel remains lead developer, now as part of a team at Saber Interactive, rather than on his own. I also checked to see whether the original Spintires would get any more updates - it would not. (UPDATE: Oovee now tells me there is still hope - although there are no plans to announce right now.)