Iberia expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 slips to 2021, graphical updates coming soon

Earlier today, SCS Software dropped another update for the community, labelling it “The Good News and the Mixed News.” Here’s the good news: both American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 will see upgrades to their overall visual fidelity. This includes enhancements to the lighting engine (including physically-based rendering), new HDR skyboxes, and more vibrant weather effects. As for the bad news, the Iberia expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 has slipped to spring 2021.

In a recent blog post, SCS Software went into full transparency mode to give its fans the rundown as to what to expect from the studio in the coming months. The post mentioned how hard the 200-person team has been working across the board to provide new content for both titles, in addition to upgrading the engine with more modern visual features.

With the aforementioned improvements, SCS has stated that moving forward, all future versions of both games will be built with the new tech in mind. This includes the incoming Iberia expansion for ETS2, which SCS confirms will be the “first major release to benefit from the new light [enhancements] at launch.” Players can expect to see “not-so-small additions” to version 1.39 of both games in terms of graphical improvements, with the full rework coming in Update 1.40. To achieve the full upgrade, the production team is working to update “all the models and textures of both games.”

Slow and steady wins the race

Due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent enforcement of stay-at-home orders, the SCS staff has been back-and-forth with working in its challenging home environments and at the studio throughout the year. The team is currently back on a WFH schedule, which has slowed down the speed of production. As a result, the Iberia expansion for ETS2, which was announced nearly a year ago, will now release in Q1 2021. SCS mentions that customers can expect a “late-winter timeframe.” The team intends to reach closed beta status for Update 1.40 by January 2021 — it will launch alongside the new expansion, it seems.

Left: Old graphics in ETS2 — Right: New graphics.

This will be the first time that ETS2 will go without an expansion releasing in December. SCS says the delay is due to the large undertaking of such a project combined with unprecedented world conditions as being the culprit for this delay. Still, a month delay is relatively modest.

Even with these delays, the studio has still managed to churn out to map expansions for American Truck Simulator this year: Idaho and Colorado. Wyoming has also been recently teased as the next expansion. Two new trucks were also delivered to that sim this year, with a third on the way. All-in-all, SCS has clearly not been dragging its feet throughout 2020, even with the tougher than usual working conditions. To cap off its blog post, the team thanks the community for its support throughout the years and patience for future releases.