The people yearn to truck. That’s my main takeaway from a 10-year anniversary post on the SCS Software blog (opens in new tab) announcing that Euro Truck Simulator 2 (opens in new tab) has sold over 13 million copies and 80 million DLCs—in the form of cosmetic packs and major expansions—since it came out on October 18, 2012. To mark the game’s phenomenal and unexpected success, SCS is organising an in-game trucking competition and spoke a little about plans for the game’s future.
The update says that there are “so many features” on Euro Truck Simulator 2’s roadmap that SCS hopes the game has “at least another decade of further growth in front of it” before it’s time for it to retire. Bad news for anyone that was hoping for an imminent announcement of Euro Truck Simulator 3, but quite an ambition for what the devs originally thought of as a “small truck simulation game in a niche genre”.
To celebrate the game’s astonishing success over the last decade, SCS will be doling out 10th anniversary skins to anyone who completes a single delivery in the game with a World of Trucks-connected account. SCS doesn’t say if there’s a time-limit on that offer, mind, so if you’re desperate for a decennial decal it’s probably better to grab it as soon as you can.
There’ll also be a livestream at 6PM CEST today (opens in new tab) with company CEO Pavel Šebor, where we’ll hopefully hear a bit more about what the next 10 years of Euro trucking will look like. They’ll be giving away merch and prizes there too if you participate in the game’s anniversary social media campaign on Twitter (opens in new tab), Facebook (opens in new tab), and Instagram (opens in new tab).
It’s heartwarming that a game as peculiar and specific as Euro Truck Simulator 2 has had such an extraordinary decade, especially since no one seems to have been more surprised by the game’s success than its creators. Some even say it’s one of the best open-world games on PC (opens in new tab). I expect that when the game’s 20th anniversary does roll around (and we all live in city-states that don’t need trucks anymore after a Deus Ex-style Great Collapse), the game will still be going strong on Steam’s most-played charts (opens in new tab).