Project CARS

Project CARS felt revolutionary in 2015. Slightly Mad Studios had done something nobody else dared—built a racing sim funded entirely by the community, 85,000 members on the WMD portal contributing feedback from 2011 through 2013-2015 beta testing. When it launched May 2015, we jumped in to experience what a $5 million community-funded racer looked like in action. The streams showcased handling models that actually respected tire wear and track evolution, vehicle physics that demanded respect, and a completely different approach to racing games than what the console market offered. We hit 638 peak viewers, capturing the enthusiasm around what was genuinely a novel funding model succeeding. By the time we'd streamed those 51 hours, the game had already hit two million sales by October 2016, and we'd watched the community's bet on itself pay off spectacularly.

The project cars stream stats from our 2015 run captured something important—we averaged 446 viewers across 51 hours, and hit 638 peak viewership when curiosity about the community-funded model was highest. Those 23,113 hours watched reflect genuine interest in seeing how a crowdfunded racing sim handled real driver audiences. The project cars streaming community understood what they were getting into: authentic motorsport simulation, even if launch bugs in corner bunching and controller support reminded everyone that this wasn't a AAA-polished console racer.