I imagined Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal when I heard Euro Truck Simulator 2 would add Venice in the next patch. Perhaps you’d drop film cannisters off at the Venice Film Festival, or communion wafers at St Mark’s Basilica. ETS 2 and I romanticise different things. Its Venice is a city built around docks and industrial estates. It’s a city for people to work in, not for tourists to visit. Roads, not canals. As someone not into Simulating, I’m charmed by this practical view.

If you’d like to drive past Venetian warehouses and breathe in Venetian fumes, you can have a peek as SCS Software have released an open beta build of patch 1.11.

The patch adds three new cities in all, with the Austrian cities of Graz and Klagenfurt too. I’d never heard of those two before, so I’m perfectly happy believing they’re all business. “Klagenfurt” sounds like it could have lots of industrial estates. Sure, why not? Whatever. But Venice! Glorious, stinking Venice! Venice is one of those few cities which we’ve not only heard of, we’ve seen, and have a tourist’s eye view of even if we haven’t been there.

Video games are usually so happy to reinforce our grand romantic views of cities, showing the same handful of landmarks. How will we understand we’re in New York if we don’t see Times Square? What’s London without the Tower? Euro Truck Simulator 2 doesn’t care. Euro Truck Simulator 2 has a job for you to complete. Venice to you is a road and a warehouse. Adjust your seat (also a feature new to patch 1.11) and deliver that pallet. If you’re quick, maybe you’ll earn enough to visit Venice as a tourist.



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You’ll need to have ETS2 on Steam to get into the beta. Opt in the usual way: right-click on it in your library, select Properties, go to the Beta tab, and jump on the ‘public_beta’ branch. More details here and here and here and here.