Euro Truck Simulator 2 is one of the hottest games on the market, and in fact has made the top 25 selling games on Steam in 2015 - although it was boosted by inclusion in bundles. Nearly 3 years have passed since it was launched, and the game still receives major updates. Most recently with things like World of Trucks, it was updated with all new content and capabilities, even with its spinoff American Truck Simulator releasing soon. The latest update though gives something that fans have been wanting - a significant upgrade to the modding capabilities as the developer is releasing the SCS Blender Tools version 1.0.

Designed to help deal with the problem of users having to reverse engineer file types, as well as the delay for 3rd party tools to catch up with updates the SCS Blender Tools 1.0 will also bring officially supported mods and in the future, Steam Workshop. The additions in the 1.0 version include:

Extensive Shader Library

Support for Prefab Locators

Material Aliasing Implementation

Material Flavor System Implementation

A New Warning system for 3D viewport meaning no need to check the console result

Shader color management overhaul so the editor gives the same result as the game

Vertex color alpha support

Custom normals import

Proper handling for Meshes

Proper handling of initially scaled Bones

And the ability to preview textures when selecting them in file browser

There was already a wiki for modding and it has been updated. It addition, the source code of the modding tools have been released for coders to look at. They've added a new section to their forum for people to discuss mods and bring up issues as well as lurking there themselves, and they've created a special section on their web page for Modding.

Quick Take

SCS has done a great job of supporting Euro Truck Simulator and the addition of official mod tools is further proof of that. These tools will make it easier for people then ever to mod, and the addition of Steam Workshop in the future will bring it more visibility.

Some users might have concern after the Steam Paid Mods debacle about the mention of a business model after talking about an official channel for mods, but this appears to A) not be set up and B) be a discussion of a much much more curated and different set up. The other big difference in many ways is the type of game and the type of modding that often goes on in them that makes it different for each game. For now I suggest waiting to hear what SCS has to say going forward as their excellent support for the title and engagement has earned them that trust I think.