One of the prominent members of the team behind Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa Competizione, Aristotelis Vasilakos leaves Kunos Simulazioni, annoucning his departure in a Youtube video.
The former Head of Vehicle and Handling R&D has been involved with the company for 15 years, and is well known throughout the sim racing community for many years. Along with streaming and sharing his own racing efforts with a large audience on Youtube, he’s also been a public face of Kunos, particularly on topics including car physics, tyre models and more.
In a video revealing his departure, Aris explains it as the reason he has been releatively quiet for the last six months, and also teases the content coming from Kunos in 2024, along with making it clear that the developer is in good shape. And he’s moving out of sim racing to work on a much larger and ambitious metaverse project.
It’s the biggest departure from Kunos Simulazioni since co-founder Stefano Casillo in 2020. And it comes at an interesting time as the developer is building up to the launch of Assetto Corsa 2 in Summer 2024. Especially as parent company Digital Bros has been undergoing restructuring, potentially reducing their total workforce by 30%. While there’s been no news of widespread redundancies at Kunos, at the same time as Aris has revealed he’s moving on, there are a number of former 505 Games staff looking for new opportunities via sites like LinkedIn, and mentioning Assetto Corsa Competizione on their CVs.
After more than 15 years in sim racing both professionally and as a hobby, there’s no suggestion that Aris leaving is anything other than an opportunity for him to take on a new role which ‘will hopefully make me grow profesisonally‘. The timing with the restructuring may just be coincidental, but it’s certainly fuelled some discussion within the sim racing community, along with many messages thanking Aris for all of his conbtributions over the years.
You can keep up with the latest news on the continuing work of Kunos Simulazioni with our Assetto Corsa Competizione coverage, along with Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa 2.
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