Spintires is a game about making trucks real muddy, and what a wonderful niche to snuggle up in. Andy noted that there wasn't a whole lot to it in his review, and while updates have been promised for a while now, they've been slow going. That might be because of "communication problems" between developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj and publisher Oovee, or maybe everyone involved is trying to reverse out of a muddy swamp. Probably the former, but you never know.

Anyhoo—Spintires has been updated. With five lovely new trucks. And know that official modding tools, and Steam Workshop support, are on the way soon. Those trucks are the B-66, B-131, C-4310, D-537 and K-700, and I bet you can't wait to deform terrain with their big wheels, and slather their chassis in sloppy mud.

As for Steam Workshop support, that's mostly done, albeit "with some finishing off to do".

"The remaining programming that needs to be done could not be completed until this build was stable," Oovee say. "This is where we had to make a decision, either 1) release the update as it stands, with workshop and the editors to follow over the coming weeks, or 2) break the news to you that you would not be receiving the update that is ready to be released, until workshop and the editors were ready to go.

"After much consideration, we have made the decision to release this stable iteration of the update, minus full workshop implementation and the editors due to them being incomplete at this time."

The full patch notes are located here. (Cheers, RPS.)

Spintires is very much a niche game. It's about driving rough, rugged, Soviet-era vehicles through mud deep enough to drown a giraffe. And that's really about it. Even so, it found enough of an audience to sell 100,000 copies in relatively short order, making it a legitimate indie hit, but things seemed to turn sour late last year when developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj said publisher Oovee had made off with the money and frozen him out of his own creation.

But in a statement posted today, Tony Fellas of Oovees blamed most of the trouble on "communications issues," with both customers and Zagrebelnyj, which have now been cleared up. "We openly admit that communications between Oovee and our customers have been weak over the last few months. 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," he wrote.

A small bug-fix update to Spintires is currently in testing, while a larger one expected in April will incorporate mod support. A DLC release is expected to come out in the summer, and plans for a proper sequel are also being kicked around.

"How can we possibly talk about the next iteration of Spintires when we still haven t finished improving the current version of Spintires? Well to be fair, software is never finished and we understand that. But with the huge success of the Spintires release, it s kind of a no-brainer but to continue the franchise and create an even better game with a larger team and a larger budget," Fellas wrote. "So with great pleasure we can confirm that planning has commenced for the next iteration of Spintires, whatever form it may come in."

In a follow-up post, Zagrebelnyj said images of a Skype chat in which he reportedly made disparaging comments about Oovee were faked. "I was pissed with our situation but I never said anything like it… Thanks to Tony our "communication" problems are now in the past, so expect new cool stuff for Spintires soon!" 

Spintires is an off-road driving simulator in which you take hard-as-nails Soviet-era vehicles on excursions through the rugged Russian wilderness. The outstanding physics make for a very realistic simulation of hardcore off-roading, but as a game, it doesn't have a whole lot else going on. You're not racing for the flag against other players or hurrying to evacuate Strelok from the Exclusion Zone; you're just driving around muddy woods. Andy Kelly said in his June review that it felt like an Early Access game because its scope is so limited, and now it appears that it could stay that way forever.

In a message posted on the Russian social network VK and translated on Steam, developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj accused UK-based publisher Oovee of taking the money and skipping town, leaving him unable to update the game. "Sad news... just seemed like the development process started, I almost finished my map and tools to develop mods (free upgrade)... as our Englishmen from oovee together with the loot disappeared," he said. "I don't have permissions to upload the update to Steam. So now I'll complete and release map editor, in the version it is now, and this will be end of Spintires."

He also claimed that Oovee was deleting his posts from its official English-language forum, effectively cutting him off from a large part of his audience. Oovee, however, has denied the allegations, saying Zagrebelnyj has been paid in full and that there is no breach of contract on either side. It also expressed hope that development will resume soon, and said that talks to expand the team to allow for faster and more wide-ranging development were also planned.

"Unfortunately there have been some communication issues recently which appear to have lead to this post being made by Pavel on the Russian forum," it wrote on its own forums. "Oovee has not been notified of any contract terminations or anything of that matter—a discussion will be held on the subject to rectify any misunderstandings."

As for future updates, it added, "As Oovee owns the rights to Spintires, we have no plans of our own to halt and/or cease to develop the game further."

Zagrebelnyj said he still holds the rights to the technology and source code, however, and may use that to create another, similar game.