In an about-turn, Saber Porto will at least address some reported bugs following Dakar Desert Rally’s USA Tour DLC.
On the face of it, the cessation of support for Dakar Desert Rally was, how shall we say, unorthodox.
Why release a significant paid-for expansion and simultaneously stop support? There was a chance that the USA Tour map was the most optimised DLC of all time and did not require any further tweaks, but given the sometimes-rocky history of this title, unlikely.
This is 2024 when games are released across multiple platforms that all support patching and when there’s never been more community-to-developer communication channels. Thankfully, it seems now this decision has been reversed.
“Hello pilots, we hear you,” begins the statement posted to the game’s social media accounts.
“We greatly appreciate those of you who took the time and effort to submit reports to our support team, as they helped us to investigate some of the issues that came up with the USA Tour update last week,” it continues.
“We are looking into addressing some of the stability issues we are seeing, starting with a fix today for crashes experienced on the PS5 when loading into the Saudi Arabia map.
“We will share more information as we have it and thank you once again for your continued support for Dakar Desert Rally.”
Multiple users have reported frame-rate dips in the USA pack, which don’t appear as prevalent in the main Saudi Arabian area. It remains to be seen if these optimisation challenges will be dealt with, or whether the development team is purely looking at more severe issues such as game crashes.
Despite this U-turn, it certainly feels as if fundamental gameplay changes should not be expected henceforth.
“This is the end of a memorable journey for the team,” reads a statement on the game’s Steam page touting the DLC launch.
“We dedicated much of our time into delivering this content and fixes for the issues in Dakar Desert Rally with the hope of ending with a stable product that everyone can enjoy. Following this update, the Known Issues article on the Saber Support and game’s websites will be removed.”
It felt dunderheaded at the time – not that we know precisely why this was the case, or to besmirch the development team, but we think at least small quirks are expected when releasing new content across five platforms.
At the very least, we can’t help but feel hotfix support in the weeks after launch should have been factored in.
As we reported earlier this month, however, Studio and Game Director Paulo Gomes left Saber in September of 2023 to form his own company Paulo Games Production – potentially impacting the future of the title.
Do you think the power of the community helped to change Saber Interactive’s minds? Let us know in the comments below.
On the face of it, the cessation of support for Dakar Desert Rally was, how shall we say, unorthodox.
Why release a significant paid-for expansion and simultaneously stop support? There was a chance that the USA Tour map was the most optimised DLC of all time and did not require any further tweaks, but given the sometimes-rocky history of this title, unlikely.
This is 2024 when games are released across multiple platforms that all support patching and when there’s never been more community-to-developer communication channels. Thankfully, it seems now this decision has been reversed.
“Hello pilots, we hear you,” begins the statement posted to the game’s social media accounts.
“We greatly appreciate those of you who took the time and effort to submit reports to our support team, as they helped us to investigate some of the issues that came up with the USA Tour update last week,” it continues.
“We are looking into addressing some of the stability issues we are seeing, starting with a fix today for crashes experienced on the PS5 when loading into the Saudi Arabia map.
“We will share more information as we have it and thank you once again for your continued support for Dakar Desert Rally.”
Multiple users have reported frame-rate dips in the USA pack, which don’t appear as prevalent in the main Saudi Arabian area. It remains to be seen if these optimisation challenges will be dealt with, or whether the development team is purely looking at more severe issues such as game crashes.
Despite this U-turn, it certainly feels as if fundamental gameplay changes should not be expected henceforth.
“This is the end of a memorable journey for the team,” reads a statement on the game’s Steam page touting the DLC launch.
“We dedicated much of our time into delivering this content and fixes for the issues in Dakar Desert Rally with the hope of ending with a stable product that everyone can enjoy. Following this update, the Known Issues article on the Saber Support and game’s websites will be removed.”
It felt dunderheaded at the time – not that we know precisely why this was the case, or to besmirch the development team, but we think at least small quirks are expected when releasing new content across five platforms.
At the very least, we can’t help but feel hotfix support in the weeks after launch should have been factored in.
As we reported earlier this month, however, Studio and Game Director Paulo Gomes left Saber in September of 2023 to form his own company Paulo Games Production – potentially impacting the future of the title.
Do you think the power of the community helped to change Saber Interactive’s minds? Let us know in the comments below.
