Czech-based game studio SCS Software, known for heavy-duty simulation games such as Euro Truck Simulator and American Truck Simulator, announced the Heart of Russia DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 in early 2021. Thanks to this DLC, players would be able to travel a significant part of Russia in the game. This DLC, which is ready to be released, may never see the light of day.
On February 24, 2022, our Heart of Russia team was 6-8 weeks away from completing the work of SCS;s highly anticipated new DLC. We were all very happy with the result, we put a lot of effort into making this new region look fantastic in the game. We were confident that our community of players, especially those in Russia, would appreciate it.
Then, all of a sudden, the whole world was shaken by the news that Ukraine had been invaded by Russia. We were in shock.
SCS talked about what it did for the war at this point, such as donating proceeds from the Ukranian Paint Jobs Pack DLC.
But right now, the Heart of Russia DLC is facing a lot of uncertainty. We asked ourselves a lot of questions, including the most obvious ones. Will we be able to release the Heart of Russia DLC one day? Should we complete the studies? Finally, we gathered our thoughts and reached a decision.
While developing our games, we try to be apolitical as much as possible and to keep the player mass away from the conflicts in daily life. But the Heart of Russia DLC is directly related to Russia, and with so many people harmed, we stopped releasing the DLC so that we don’t think we support or tolerate this aggressive style in any way.
Injustice cannot and should not win. When it’s time for Ukraine to renew and heal, we’ll find a way for our Heart of Russia DLC to play a role in that healing process.
As you can see, the Heart of Russia DLC is shelved for now. Of course, it will be published someday in some way, but time will tell.
