Most Played Racing Games On Steam In August 2024

Kevin Troschinski said:

Can someone finally explain me the BeamMG fascination ? Is there a goal? Racing? Or just sandbox ?
Obviously the title is great but i can´t understand why ... Maybe i have not enough time to just drive around without a goal.

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Freeroam driving easy to setup. Shutoku in BeamNG is just great. Easy to alter environmental conditions on the fly.
Rock Crawling, not so easy as you might think. Great rally stages.
Delivering constantly free content, plus the ingame workshop.
Never cared much about this crash simulation thing, but many do.

edit: I forgot charming cars: even if they have no real brand most of them are more charming than the usual generic GT3 Audi, BMW, Porsche stuff you get in "real" sims.

Cote Dazur said:

Yes, they all are video game, and yes it is possible to have a car race in most of them, which make most video game in this list racing game, technically.
Where it gets a little bit more debatable on the legitimacy of the mix is what is presumedly of interest to OT membership.
In my view, among the 36 title in the list, 12 are, in my view, legitimate racing games/simulator of interest for this forum readership.
It might be time to update the game criterium for this list as to stop comparing Apple to Oranges or just forget this article altogether, as it might not be representative of anything relevant to OT readership.

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That's fine but you'd have to remove AC as that is now firmly in the same section as arcade and novelty stuff due to the abundance of silly mods for it, that is why its so high still, not because of the base game.
People use AC for all sorts from drift to bad motorbikes to CROCS on wheels to roller coaasters and Mario Kart tracks etc....
I mean surely you don't think if AC wasn't modderble it would be up there do you?

kamov22 said:

That's fine but you'd have to remove AC as that is now firmly in the same section as arcade and novelty stuff

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LMU competing in the ranks with 'Need for Speed' is pretty sad for S397. I don't think they realise how damaged their reputation has become in the community. LMU is not as bad a game as that.

BazzaLB said:

I'm having a great time playing Ride 4 in VR with my Wheel/Pedals (90degree rotation Clutch is brake). Don't even see Ride 5 on the list (maybe I missed it). Oh well, lucky my enjoyment is not proportional to game popularity (which seems to be contra to the modern trend in society in general)

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I've always got time for some ride 4 fun!

Guess LMU will stay at the bottom for a longer time. The sim is too complicated when it comes to quick and short racing.

Most of us want to race and battle. Making an intelligent strategy, pitstops and switch all laps between e-load capacity makes me cry. Also the graphics is outdated

ALGRX said:

Guess LMU will stay at the bottom for a longer time. The sim is too complicated when it comes to quick and short racing.

Most of us want to race and battle. Making an intelligent strategy, pitstops and switch all laps between e-load capacity makes me cry. Also the graphics is outdated

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, I guess they have a problem then, because to me LMU looks like it is only good for online sprint races so far.

What I want from LMU is to be able to do long endurance races with AI co-drivers, save games, and enjoy the strategy and endurance aspects of ... endurance racing.

So far it seems to me they would have done better to finish the BTCC game, since they already had good cars, half the tracks, and BTCC lends itself perfectly to argy-bargy races of 20 minutes length. Perhaps the RWD vs FWD balance issues were insurmountable.

Not balancing the FWD & RWD BTCC cars is just typical S397 working methods really, exactly the same as putting the new tyre model on the Oreca LMP2 but then not putting it on the Ligier LMP2, what sense could that possibly make!! Singing and shouting when there's DLC to be sold but tumbleweeds when there's fundemantal issues.
S397 your titles don't deserve this, DO Something!!

wowbagger said:

, I guess they have a problem then, because to me LMU looks like it is only good for online sprint races so far.

What I want from LMU is to be able to do long endurance races with AI co-drivers, save games, and enjoy the strategy and endurance aspects of ... endurance racing.

So far it seems to me they would have done better to finish the BTCC game, since they already had good cars, half the tracks, and BTCC lends itself perfectly to argy-bargy races of 20 minutes length. Perhaps the RWD vs FWD balance issues were insurmountable.

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It was also a licencing/money/goals issue... The S397 studio has it's name for Le Mans reasons... LMU is a passion project...

Hence it's got hypercars that are just screaming for proper races... And casual drivers complaining that it's too complicated to drive them or that they can't brake or accelerate...

There's plenty of sim racers who love the way it drives and are waiting for private servers... But just can't stand the RaceControl focus of the title... Because of the public lobby racing... When that floodgate opens we'll be able to enjoy those endurance races to our hearts content...

2.4 hours just isn't long enough...

Ya, I was being facetious with the balancing comment.

They definitely leave one feeling like their dev department has strong ADD and very quickly gets bored of completing any one project.

Sadly this is typical S397 manner. Once they released Diriyah FE track it was an insta buy for me, because Diriyah is a night race. Just to recognize that S397 didn´t implement track lights and still haven´t.

Cote Dazur said:

Yes, they all are video game, and yes it is possible to have a car race in most of them, which make most video game in this list racing game, technically.
Where it gets a little bit more debatable on the legitimacy of the mix is what is presumedly of interest to OT membership.
In my view, among the 36 title in the list, 12 are, in my view, legitimate racing games/simulator of interest for this forum readership.
It might be time to update the game criterium for this list as to stop comparing Apple to Oranges or just forget this article altogether, as it might not be representative of anything relevant to OT readership.

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I said something similar once and was told by OT official that OT is about all racing games. Not just about sims. So whatever your/mine expectations of OT are OT themselves don't share them. Even though (at least from the comments section) it's clearly visible that most participating are here for the sims. Go figure.

Havner said:

I said something similar once and was told by OT official that OT is about all racing games. Not just about sims.

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As it was originally Race Department then the title reflected that racing games were it's theme. The fact that some members choose to be judgemental about others choices isn't the fault of the website.

Havner said:

Even though (at least from the comments section) it's clearly visible that most participating are here for the sims. Go figure.

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You're correct about the comments section but the vast majority of visitors don't bother with it, they play the games they enjoy and don't seem to feel the need to denigrate the games they don't.
I find it strange that I don't think I've came across a so called "casual racer" running down a hardcore one only the other way about.

kamov22 said:

That's fine but you'd have to remove AC as that is now firmly in the same section as arcade and novelty stuff

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No, it is as much a Sim as RF2, AMS2, F1XX, R3E, LMU, ACC, GTR2, Rennsport and a few other. Yes, it can also be more, that does not remove any of its SIM credibility.

kamov22 said:

I mean surely you don't think if AC wasn't modderble it would be up there do you?

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No, I don't, if AC was just available as the base game, like for console, it would be a totally different picture. But what does that have to do with anything. AC is modeable.
The community made it the ultimate sandbox where about anything can be done from cruising to championship racing with virtually any type of cars from any period on any existing or fictional track, hence it fill the whim and desire of most sim enthusiast, hence its popularity.

pz666 said:

There's plenty of sim racers who love the way it drives and are waiting for private servers...

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Yes, also plenty of sim racer waiting on LMU to have full VR support.

Havner said:

I said something similar once and was told by OT official that OT is about all racing games

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Yes, OT is about all racing games and that is all right, but does not mean that a monthly article giving a palmares comparing apple and oranges is a good idea and serve a positive purpose.
The issue might just be that people have a hard time understanding what the numbers really mean.
Personally I prefer AC to all other SIM, because I think it drive great and give the ability to do whatever I want with great graphics in VR. I also like ACC, would drive it more if the graphic in VR were better, I like LMU, but waiting for VR to be better, Like RF2, would probably drive it a lot more if I was not spending so much time in AC and knew how to access stuff like I know to do in AC, like R3E, but it does not do anything that I cannot already do in AC, like AMS2, but same as R3E plus the driving is not my favorite, like F122, but I can do F1 races only so often and the driving is not what I prefer.
When @Durge Driven says RF2 is superior in many ways, I agree, so is LMU, at the beginning I was curious why more people were not playing RF2, but now I realize that their is a lot of people enjoying RF2 within its narrow focus, it is actually quite spectacular, particularly after all those years. Look where the once popular PCars and PCars2 with all the content, cars, tracks, VR, shiny graphic and easier driving is today, almost not played, close to abandonware.

Are these numbers real? How come people still play WRC7? OK it is indeed the last accurate and decent looking WRC game KT ever made. After this they didn't even care to model the wheels and tires of the cars right, but honestly, in terms of driving, WRC8 and WRC9 are far superior. So why still play WRC7? And why is it still 19.99+4.99 for the Porsche on Steam? Nacon is absurd.

I think sometimes people need to be reminded that a sim simulates, not replicates.

Simulate literally translates to "pretending".

Michael Krone said:

I think sometimes people need to be reminded that a sim simulates, not replicates.

Simulate literally translates to "pretending".

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Lance Stroll is a sim.

Cote Dazur said:

Yes, also plenty of sim racer waiting on LMU to have full VR support.

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I'm talking about those who've enjoyed it's driving but don't keep it's daily numbers high... This is a game that has just got scheduled racing as it's main drawcard and doesn't offer the variety that iRacing does... It's very popular for how limited it actually is...

It's feel sits in that nice sweet spot between the iRacing feel whose fans say LMU has too much allowable yaw and the ACC/AMS2 feel whose fans who complain about the cars being undriveable...

When it's got it's components it's a WEC game and WEC is exploding because of hypercar and how hard they are for the professionals to drive and the resulting entertainment... All those VR enthusiasts and people on the fence are going to buy in, especially those who want great Hypercar representations... And it's not like things like private servers and VR have never worked on this engine before... So it's easy to have confidence in them... It's AI narritive career mode and UI however... Not so much...

Juan Emilio said:

Less popular things are always the best ones... don't believe me? Take a look at music. I'm happy that my sim is unpopular and hated

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But when your less popular sim becomes popular, you need to condemn the creators as sell outs, and stop being a fan of that sim.

Cote Dazur said:

No, it is as much a Sim as RF2, AMS2, F1XX, R3E, LMU, ACC, GTR2, Rennsport and a few other. Yes, it can also be more, that does not remove any of its SIM credibility.

No, I don't, if AC was just available as the base game, like for console, it would be a totally different picture. But what does that have to do with anything. AC is modeable.
The community made it the ultimate sandbox where about anything can be done from cruising to championship racing with virtually any type of cars from any period on any existing or fictional track, hence it fill the whim and desire of most sim enthusiast, hence its popularity.

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So to be clear then AC is that high because of modding, your idea was to banish stuff from the list you don't think is a 'sim', if people are playing AC because they like to drive roller coasters, or haulage trucks or motorbikes or whatever then it isn't fit to be on the list either IMO.
Not that really this list means anything as who really decides what to play based on how many others are playing it at any one time?
AC is the Garry Mods of sim racing...