The much beloved Kickstarter oddball, Spintires, has officially resumed development after a bit of a miscommunication between the developers and their publisher. This comes as a relief to many fans of the quirky game which is the Euro Truck Simulator 2 of east Russia, where the objective in Spintires is to move heavy machinery and large freight over treacherously muddy roads driven by gigantic trucks.
The issue which caused quite a bit of controversy was the discussion raised by Russian programmer Pavel Zagrebelnyy, who said that despite his constant work on Spintires, UK publishers Oovee Game Studios had failed to pay him many times, and had largely gone radio silent. Had this continued, not only would it personally have bankrupted Zagrebelnyy, but would have effectively ended all development on Spintires, which would have added it to the laundry list of failed Kickstarter games. Spintires still has many improvements and additions down its pipeline, and if the programmers couldn’t do their job and have their earned money delivered to them, there wasn’t much hope for any success.
But it’s all muddy water under a rickety bridge now, as Oovee have reported on their forums that they’ve made amends, given out payments to Zagrebelnyy, and development on Spintires will resume. “Our customer base grew far beyond what we initially expected and we needed to cater for that quickly – the development plans became sketchy and before we knew it we had a runaway train. Please accept our apologies.”
If you say so, Oovee. Either way, it’s good to see Spintires back in production. A new update was recently released to the game to prove that the tires are indeed spinning once again, and more updates are being queued up for public release. The next big addition is slated to be mod support, which will likely invigorate the dedicated fanbase of Spintires and offer countless amounts of customization. Moreover, Oovee is also announcing a sequel to Spintires, hoping to capitalize off the success of their already successful game. Fair enough I suppose. But for those excited to drive huge trees across the muddy Russian landscape, gamers can buy Spintires right now on Steam.
