KUNOS Scrapped Assetto Corsa EVO’s Career Mode — And Maybe That’s Exactly What We Needed
Opinion, 5 min read
The Assetto Corsa EVO Career Mode Bombshell
On February 4, 2026, KUNOS Simulazioni dropped the kind of announcement that makes you spit out your coffee mid-lap. The Assetto Corsa EVO career mode they’d been promising for months? Dead. Gone. Replaced by something called a Driving Academy focused on skill building and driving fundamentals. For many, this felt like the KUNOS career mode was removed from the roadmap entirely.
The fallout was immediate. Reddit erupted. Steam recent reviews cratered to 32% positive — “Mostly Negative” territory. The sim racing community collectively lost its mind. I get the anger. I really do.
But after sitting with this for a few days, I think KUNOS might have actually made the right call. This is not a defense of everything KUNOS has done with EVO — the slow updates, the thin content at $39.99, the 98% player count drop are all valid frustrations. This is specifically about whether a Driving Academy is a better fit than a traditional career mode.
Let’s Be Honest About Career Modes in Sim Racers
Here’s the thing nobody wants to admit: career modes in hardcore sims have historically been… fine at best. Forgettable at worst. They’re usually a bolted-on afterthought rather than the reason anyone keeps playing.
The original Assetto Corsa from 2014 had a career mode. Quick — tell me one memorable thing about it. You can’t, because nobody can. What people actually loved was loading up the Nordschleife with a mod car and just driving. The mod ecosystem and the raw driving experience kept that game alive for over a decade. Not the career.
ACC had championship modes, but the real retention driver was competitive multiplayer and its ranked system.
Games that do career modes well — Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport — pour massive budgets into economy systems, license tests, and hundreds of unlockable cars. Does a smaller Italian developer whose parent company just laid off 30% of its staff have the bandwidth to build that and finish the core sim? Probably not. And a half-baked career would have been worse than no career at all.
What the Assetto Corsa EVO Driving Academy Actually Promises
The Assetto Corsa EVO Driving Academy will focus on skill improvement, driving fundamentals, leaderboards, and time-based challenges. Sounds like a downgrade on paper. In practice, it aligns perfectly with what sim racers actually value.
We play sims to get faster, understand car behavior, and master tracks. A structured skill-measurement tool? That is sim racing.
Professional drivers don’t grind through an “economy.” They go through academies — literally. Ferrari Driver Academy. Red Bull Junior Team. Porsche Motorsport Academy. Structured skill development is more authentic to real racing culture than “earn credits, buy cars.”
Combined with the Daily Racing Portal — which already features SimGrid’s Grid Rating matchmaking — the Driving Academy could create a compelling loop: learn in the Academy, test yourself on leaderboards, prove it in Daily Racing.
The Real Issue Isn’t the Career Mode — It’s Trust
The anger isn’t really about the career mode in isolation. It’s about a pattern. EVO launched thin. Updates have been slow. The 1.0 date slipped from Fall 2025 to Summer 2026. And now a promised feature is getting cut.
The Digital Bros layoffs in late 2025 raised legitimate concerns about whether EVO will even reach 1.0. The career mode announcement became a lightning rod for all of that frustration.
But here’s the counter: being honest about what can and can’t be delivered — and pivoting instead of shipping something half-baked — is the more responsible choice. That’s literally what Early Access is for.
What Actually Matters for EVO’s Future
Physics and driving feel. By most accounts, EVO nails this. The tire model, force feedback, and 1000Hz suspension simulation are outstanding.
Content volume. Cars, tracks, and the Eifel free roam matter more for retention than any unlock economy ever could.
Modding support. This is the real make-or-break feature. When the mod editor drops post-1.0, the community will do what it always has: build longevity.
Multiplayer depth. The Daily Racing Portal is a strong foundation. Build on it.
The Bottom Line on the Career Mode Decision
Cutting a feature that couldn’t be done justice and replacing it with something more focused and more authentic to sim racing isn’t a betrayal. It’s a studio playing to its strengths.
Judge the Driving Academy on what it delivers — not on what was promised before. The things that made Assetto Corsa legendary are still on the table.
But that’s my take. Am I being too generous? Or is the community overreacting? Drop your thoughts below — I want to hear from the sim racers actually in the driver’s seat.