Yes, you read that right. In a series of tweets, Stefano Casillo (the lead programmer over at Kunos) announced that on December 1st, 2015 the multiplayer lobby of netKar Pro will be shutdown, and the software will become available as freeware (and no longer supported).
Until then, the license verification was already deactivated, which means that if you have a pay code you can share it with friends and the product will get activated for unlimited time.
For those of you that don't know what nK is, I'll say only this: it's beyond any doubt the most underrated sim out there. Even today, the driving feeling is so great, the graphics still hold nicely and yet - the user base was so small.. It's true that multiplayer capabilities were limited (15 clients max, iirc) but it had wet weather driving, which is yet to be implemented (if ever) in Assetto Corsa.
I remember reading in one interview some time back about the big "moral hit" Stefano & team took, after releasing the game and just a couple of days later the crack spread over the net, sending the initial sales into the abyss. This had a big role into shaping the path nK took afterwards..
This is the dark face of the Internet.. and who knows how many great products/companies died (or never got to be known) because of this. Luckly, Kunos wasn't one of them. They got over it, managed to get back to the working table and taking advantage of every lesson (good or bad) learned, put the bases of the new sim we all enjoy today.
netKar is dead(ish), long live Assetto Corsa !
Until then, the license verification was already deactivated, which means that if you have a pay code you can share it with friends and the product will get activated for unlimited time.
For those of you that don't know what nK is, I'll say only this: it's beyond any doubt the most underrated sim out there. Even today, the driving feeling is so great, the graphics still hold nicely and yet - the user base was so small.. It's true that multiplayer capabilities were limited (15 clients max, iirc) but it had wet weather driving, which is yet to be implemented (if ever) in Assetto Corsa.
I remember reading in one interview some time back about the big "moral hit" Stefano & team took, after releasing the game and just a couple of days later the crack spread over the net, sending the initial sales into the abyss. This had a big role into shaping the path nK took afterwards..
This is the dark face of the Internet.. and who knows how many great products/companies died (or never got to be known) because of this. Luckly, Kunos wasn't one of them. They got over it, managed to get back to the working table and taking advantage of every lesson (good or bad) learned, put the bases of the new sim we all enjoy today.
netKar is dead(ish), long live Assetto Corsa !
