Yup I have been owning this one for 2 years now.
Although it usually make people laugh, it is a pretty damn good piece of software!
First, it is a driving simulation... If any of the 2 words annoy you, then you are not part of the target market segment
Loads of crap-simulation titles are published each year, thanks to crappy developers/publishers who release cheap stuff worth nothing just to make money.
Those guys are not taking the matter lightly and released a high-quality, maitained/expanding product.
They continue to improve the game regularly, and they finally managed to get
licenses rights from all 6 truck manufacturers depicted in the game.
The recently started
re-recording sound for all trucks, so in an upcoming update, you'll finally get Mercedes trucks (replacing the 'Majectic' brand used as a placeholder while awaiting license rights) and get more detailed sounds for every model!
They also regularly add content, as new trucks appeared in a recent update.
I strongly recommend you of reading/following their blog:
http://blog.scssoft.com/
You can buy
the bundle base game + expansion for 30€.
You can get the game either retail or Steam. When you buy retail, you will have a Steam key for it.
I hate dematerialized stuff, so I went for the pressed DVDs.
Their business model expands from selling the base game with DLCs, while trying to provide as much as possible for free:
- Expansions include more map coverage. Going East extends the map to the east, while the upcoming Scadinavia one will go north. They are infrequent.
- Paint jobs are a regular proposed DLC: for a few bucks, you can use those themed paintings on your trucks. There are several series, one coming regularly is per-country paint jobs. They use it as an additional money income to help producing content.
They stated a project called 'World of Trucks' as a meta-project aiming at joining several games to a common connected environment (like a common account to share/discuss/store settings). That project paves the way to other truck simulations game.
They started an 'American Truck Simulator' project in the direct lineage of the old Wheel of Steel license, with the new based that ETS2 represents.
More information available on anything I said on their blog.