Hi Bernat.
So actually I personally think that there is much more reason to be pessimistic about the resumption of rfactor 2 developments at some point as well as new content.
But without necessarily being interested in what I think, who has been an informed user of rfactor 2 for 10 years, let's focus on what the former boss of s397, namely Marcel Offermans, says objectively and in a very pragmatic and technical manner (there are two quotes that you can find on this forum) :
1) First quote :
With the LMU planned full release moving from december to february and transforming into an early access version, it seems likely that the team at Studio 397 will continue to work on the title.
No new release date for the finished product has been mentioned, but if I may take an educated guess, I would not be surprised if they will take the rest of 2024 and aim for a full release at the end of the year.
Meanwhile the content team will certainly have to work on the 2024 season content, and possibly a few other DLC packs for LMU to ensure people keep playing the title.
That will take us well into 2025 and by that time it's probably too late to restart development on rF2.
It's probably a better time to start work on rF3. Or start porting LMU to consoles.
2) Second quote
I'm looking at this mainly from a technical perspective. Let me explain...
Based on the initial announcement for LMU, where they anticipated a Q4 2023 release, my guess is that development started roughly at the start of Q1 2023, assuming they would estimate that building a new game on top of the rF2 platform would take at least a year.
So at that point they FORKED THE CODEBASE and started work on the new title.
Because they no longer had to support modding or any of the existing content, this allowed them to make changes to the codebase that break compatibility.
Fast forward to 2025 and you have a codebase that has drifted away from rF2 for well over two years.
At that point even "cherry picking" bugfixes, let alone back-porting major features is going to be a challenging task and you can be sure that some of the more interesting changes can't easily be brought into rF2 anyway because it would again break compatibility.
Assuming LMU does well enough to support the current team, which is basically back to the original size of Studio 397 before the acquisition, would you then bet on the fact that resuming with rF2 is the best way to build a sustainable company, when early 2023 you clearly decided it was better to stop working on rF2 and focus on LMU? To me that just does not sound logical.
Granted, building rF3 might not be the most sensible thing to do either. I am following the developments at Kunos with interest as they are going to attempt this first (AC -> ACC -> AC2 is in some ways similar to rF2 -> LMU -> rF3) so you could say it's a great test case for other developers to watch. I don't expect AC2 to support modding. This will be another test. Is the community going to jump onto AC2 in the same way, even without it? We live in interesting times!
You make so many weak assumptions that I doubt is even worth to address them. There's one assumption though that stands out: you think rF3 wouldn't be a daunting task. For me, it would involve burning a lot of resources to start again and go back to where we are now, only 5 years or more later.