iRacing Acquires Racing Game Developer Monster Games

iRacing Acquires Monster Games 01.jpg
Monster Games, developer of titles like NASCAR Heat and SRX: The Game, has been acquired by iRacing.

iRacing has started their year by announcing the acquisition of Monster Games, a fellow racing game developer.

Monster Games' development resume dates back to 1998's Viper Racing, and they also released a title last year with SRX: The Game. The years in between saw the team take on many one-off titles and the NASCAR: Heat series.

iRacing has insisted that in spite of the acquisition of Monster Games and Orontes Games, their focus will still be the core iRacing game, though they did note that Monster Games will "further the company’s ability to bring the highest quality racing games to the broader market, including the console space."

It's too soon to say what the two recent acquisitions mean for iRacing, though both former Orontes and Monster employees could bring fresh perspectives on certain development issues and help improve iRacing.

What are your thoughts on iRacing and Monster Games joining forces? Will this help the title? Let us know in the comments below.
About author
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

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Really looking forward to what could become. Here's a link that gives more insight on the acquisition.


It was also announced today that Nvidia added Nvidia reflex support to iRacing which helps reduce latency.

 
President and owner of MGI, Rich Garcia, will join the iRacing development team and be reunited with iRacing CEO & CTO Dave Kaemmer, who worked together at Kaemmer’s former company, Papyrus Racing Games, where Garcia was instrumental in the early years of Papyrus in building the foundation for what iRacing has become today.

So they are finally reunited again. Suddenly the merge seems much more logical.
Seeing the specs of the latest consoles.
Having iRacing on the latest consoles with a beefy 4K screen and a nice rig hooked up can be a great setup.
 
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A good, singleplayer NASCAR-game would be awesome. Tried Heat 5 but wasn't for me. A more simulator-y approach would be nice.
 
I'm confused, I thought Monster Games was Motorsports games....which just released Nascar Ignition.? Did Motorsports games just sell the Monster games portion of their business?
 
I'm confused, I thought Monster Games was Motorsports games....which just released Nascar Ignition.? Did Motorsports games just sell the Monster games portion of their business?
Monster Games was the studio developing NASCAR Heat titles for 704 Games (the publisher). In 2020, 704 moved the development in-house and separated from Monster Games, who went on to publish independent titles such as the Tony Stewart games. 704 Games was then bought by Motorsport Games to develop NASCAR 21: Ignition, with well-known consequences.
 
edit: take my comment with a large lick of salt. I confused MGI (Monster) with Motorsports Games (of which I thought Monster was a part). Not so dire and doom and gloom now...

AND JUST LIKE THAT, you're either buying software from iRacing or EA... (Don't know where Kunos and Reiza will end up, but they will have to merge. You think they can compete on terms with either of those?)

I'd love to say that competition should raise both products, but they'll figure out it makes more sense to just carve up the motorsports landscape into its niches and collect their rents.
 
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Papyrus babeeeeee! :p

Copying something I wrote in another thread about this yesterday:

Oh my, this is exciting indeed. Something I really like about this acquisition for iRacing's future is that the AI racing in games by Monster is often very good, especially on paved ovals. Check out SRX The Game -- with the SRX cars or Late Models on paved short ovals, it legitimately gets near or above the level of NR2003 from what I've seen. Perhaps Monster will help iRacing with their AI? That'd be awesome if so.

NOTE: Hmm. Reading that press release, the head honcho of Monster was with Papyrus (devs of NR2003) along with Dave Kaemmer back in the day. So my statement about the AI above seems less surprising!
 
This will be interesting especially with Motorsports Games making such a mess of Nascar 21 Ignition & owning the licences for WEC & BTCC.
Imagine how little work would have to be done for an official F1,Nascar,BTCC,WEC titles using the existing Iracing software...

Would also look a lot better because Iracing is still compromised by so many members using lower spec hardware.
 
My first idea is that all these acquisitions might lead to iRacing standalone spinoffs: you'd get, for instance, a NASCAR Cup title for download and could then use only the iRacing online structure linked to that title and of course play that title offline like any other title. I think there would be a big market for that and it might entice a lot of "oh, iRacing is soooo expensive" customers into their fold. Just an idea.
 
AND JUST LIKE THAT, you're either buying software from iRacing or EA...
Well not entirely. Sure you've mentioned Kunos and Reiza, but there's also Sector 3, Studio 397, and KT Racing.

I don't think that iRacing's acquisition of monster games is really going to send shockwaves through the sim racing community. I remember buying Tony Stewart's Sprint Car Racing and, according to Steam, I spent a grand total of 2 hours and 30 minutes in it before deleting it to ensure I wasn't wasting any of my 8 TB of SSD space on it.
 
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My first idea is that all these acquisitions might lead to iRacing standalone spinoffs: you'd get, for instance, a NASCAR Cup title for download and could then use only the iRacing online structure linked to that title and of course play that title offline like any other title. I think there would be a big market for that and it might entice a lot of "oh, iRacing is soooo expensive" customers into their fold. Just an idea.
I think you're right. Some single player career based games using shared assets of iRacing, Orontes, and Monster as needed. Put them out on PC and consoles and then "lead" the more serious racers to iRacing for the full multi-discipline / multiplayer experience.
 
My first idea is that all these acquisitions might lead to iRacing standalone spinoffs: you'd get, for instance, a NASCAR Cup title for download and could then use only the iRacing online structure linked to that title and of course play that title offline like any other title. I think there would be a big market for that and it might entice a lot of "oh, iRacing is soooo expensive" customers into their fold. Just an idea.
Yes, please!
I'd love to experience a bit of iracing without monthly costs.
 
Well not entirely. Sure you've mentioned Kunos and Reiza, but there's also Sector 3, Studio 397, and KT Racing.

I don't think that iRacing's acquisition of monster games is really going to send shockwaves through the sim racing community. I remember buying Tony Stewart's Sprint Car Racing and, according to Steam, I spent a grand total of 2 hours and 30 minutes in it before deleting it to ensure I wasn't wasting any of my 8 TB of SSD space on it.

You're right. I misspoke. I thought of MGI and Motorsports Games (the Indycar, BTCC, S397) guys as one umbrella when they are not.

8 TB for Sprint Car Racing?! That must be some high def dirt! (I actually went from SCR to the SRX game and it was a significant improvement, from Career mode to dirt modeling. A big change in car setup though. Good cushion implementation. The asphalt late model DLC is a good add too.)
 
I always hoped iRacing might decouple the online championships from the game, so you could buy the game, tracks, cars and race AI, for traditional single players who don't want to do online, then have the online as a paid subscription where there's the chance to race stars/win big prizes, etc.

It's not so much the price that put me off, but more the fact you could spend a fortune on content, then decide to don't want to subscribe any more, and then you can't use it at all.

But I appreciate their methodology is similar to TV satellite services, where your can buy films, but without subscription to the service, may not be able to watch them any more.

I just come from the old skool where I bought games from a shop then no one can take them away from me (unless they rely on online servers that go down eventually).
 
I liked Tony Stewart's game from 2020, still have to buy the two that came after. Fun game, even if there's not much to it.

Wonder what will came out of this, iRacing devs are on a shopping spree ala Disney I see... :laugh:
 
speaking of career based spin-off standalone games, they have the full US single seater career from Formula Vee all the way up to Indianapolis ready and polished on their shelves, if I am not mistaken ... (an up to date Skip Barber driving school car would help, though ;) )
 
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Imagine how little work would have to be done for an official F1,Nascar,BTCC,WEC titles using the existing Iracing software...

That's arguably what was said regarding the newest NASCAR game as well. "Just take rFactor 2, and add in the single player features and rules needed".
Didn't work out that way.
 

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