RaceDepartment has been sold to Porsche-funded Overtake.GG, whose features and content will be moved to the outlet operated by Freaks 4U Gaming.
RaceDepartment, the internet’s leading sim racing community and mod repository, has been acquired by German media agency Overtake.GG.
RaceDepartment has been an independent forum for PC sim racing mods and lively debates, founded in 2006 by Bram Hengeveld.
Overtake.GG became public in 2020 and is operated by digital marketing agency Freaks 4U Gaming with funding from German sports car manufacturer Porsche.
“Continued growth comes with many challenges, and as we always welcome your constructive feedback, we listened carefully and identified a few areas where you asked us to improve in 2023: website and download speeds, general User experience, esports, social media, video and written content,” reads Hengeveld’s blog post.
“In addition, I have a long list of improvements that I would like to add myself to run this site on a daily basis: a larger team and more resources are just a few of them.”
“Of course we are happy to add any improvements on top of the many features this forum already offers.
“In Overtake.gg we have found a like-minded brand that shares our values and also recognizes our role in the sim racing community for sixteen years.”
Full takeover
“RaceDepartment and OverTake have decided to work together on the task of providing a home for sim racing enthusiasts,” explained Hengeveld in a later forum post.
“Since this also needed to be ‘manifested’ in some sort of legally binding agreement, OverTake took over RaceDepartment to bring both platforms together under one legal entity.”
Overtake.GG and Traxion.GG have a friendly rivalry, with many commenters confusing the two. To be clear, Traxion.GG is part of the Motorsport Games family of brands, which in turn is majority owned by Motorsport Network (Autosport, Motorsport.com, Motor1, etc.). Traxion.GG does not work with or for Overtake.GG or RaceDepartment.
Overtake to subsume RaceDepartment
“We’re working on bringing Overtake and RaceDepartment together under one roof,” says product manager at
Freaks 4U Gaming GmbH, René Buttler during the Overtake.GG reveal video.
“Overtake will be your one-stop shop for everything you need for your virtual racing endeavors, integrating all of RaceDeparment’s popular features and content.”
“Having been a sim racer for over 15 years now, this is really a special day,” Buttler told Traxion.GG.
“RaceDepartment is building a great community with a ton of knowledge and an undeniable passion for sim racing, and I can’t even begin to tell you how many times the forum has saved me from going insane over an issue I’ve had with hardware or software .
“RaceDepartment had an interest in building its content like YouTube, while at OverTake one of the things we were thinking about was how to build a forum that could help other virtual racing enthusiasts.
“We realized that if we joined forces we would have all of this, so here we are! Now is the time to put our heads together and join forces to improve the platform for everyone.”
We wish everyone at RaceDepartment and Overtake.GG the very best for 2023 and beyond – Cheers to Simracing!
Full Disclosure – Traxion.GG is part of Motorsport Games and the Motorsport Games family of brands. All Traxion.GG content is editorially removed from video game development by Motorsport Games and created by a dedicated team.
