Patch 7 - Multiplayer Fixes and Next Steps!

Dear players,

After a few days in Open Beta, the patch (version 01.05.00) is going live and is now available for everyone!

Important Communication - Mountain Breakaways: Situation Update and Next Steps

Many of you have shared your thoughts on breakaways during the mountain stages of the Grand Tours: sometimes too repetitive, not always easy to control… Here is where we stand, our vision, and what we are working on next.

🔎 The Current Situation

For a while (PCM 2024 and the start of PCM 2025), breakaways were considered too timid and not realistic enough.

With patches 5 (01.03.02) and 6 (01.04.01), we reworked this aspect in depth… perhaps a bit too much. The Open Beta versions 1.05.01 and 1.05.02/1.05.03 therefore brought many adjustments to restore a better balance.

Our philosophy: if you are the overall leader, you must take on a significant part of the workload during the race. This is a deliberate choice: a Grand Tour is won with a strong team and strategic decisions — sometimes even by giving up the leader’s jersey to take it back later.

After the Open Beta release, some feedback was very negative, which surprised us given the big difference compared to patch 1.04.01. Internal testing and exchanges with some of you showed us that, despite some aspects still needing improvement, this version overall improved the racing experience.

🚀 Next Steps

We are already working on several directions:

• Reducing certain cases of overly long “marathon” breakaways that happen too frequently

• Fixing attacks from riders well-placed in the general classification (top 5 for example) at the start of certain mountain stages

Our goal is to release a new patch in Open Beta during the first week of September.

📌 Reminder about the Open Beta

The Open Beta is used to test future patches in conditions close to the final version. These builds go through our QA, but are not guaranteed to make it to the official branch. They can even sometimes be worse than the stable version — and that is precisely why your feedback is essential.

We are considering setting up a dedicated discussion thread for each Open Beta version to better centralize your feedback.

💬 How to Provide Feedback

A quick reminder: exaggerating or getting angry does not help anyone and can even slow down the resolution of issues. A concrete example: we were told that “all breakaways were going to the finish”… which turned out to be false. Result: time lost looking for a problem that did not exist or that was very different from what was reported.

What helps us:

• Precise and factual feedback

• Identifying whether a behavior is exceptional or regular

• Staying constructive, even when frustration is there

Let’s not forget that cycling, just like in real life, does not always follow a predictable script.

🤝 Improving the Feedback Loop

The game is vast, the ways to play are many, and we cannot see everything. We do not watch all creator videos, and some feedback might be missed on Discord, Steam, or elsewhere.

We may sometimes tend to listen too much to those who speak the loudest in a given place — this is not always the most relevant input, but it is also the reality of the situation.

For the future, we are considering ways to improve this feedback loop so it can be more relevant and effective, with the goal of continuing to improve the PCM gameplay experience.

Thank you to all of you who take the time to provide constructive and detailed feedback.