- Primary Subject: Euro Truck Simulator 2 / American Truck Simulator (Damage Physics Analysis)
- Key Update: An analysis of why SCS Software games lack visible mesh deformation damage, examining manufacturer licensing, engine limitations, and gameplay focus.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: August 4, 2026
- Quick Answer: SCS Software truck simulators omit visual deformation due to strict manufacturer licensing restrictions, engine limitations, and a focus on relaxing gameplay mechanics.
I have put a lot of hours into Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator, more than I would admit to most people, and the same small thing nagged at me for years.
I could clip a guardrail at speed, scrape a Scania down the side of an overpass, rear-end a parked trailer, smash into traffic, and the rig would take it without a mark.
A repair invoice pops up at the next service shop. The sheet metal stays perfect.
The idea that these games ignore damage is wrong, and that is worth clearing up first.
The simulation is there. What is missing is the part you can see.
What The Games Actually Track
Under the surface, SCS models quite a lot. Damage used to be split across five truck parts, covering the engine, transmission, chassis, cabin and wheels, with the trailer tracked separately.
The 1.49 update layered three categories on top: Damage, Parts Wear and Permanent Wear. The last of which only clears with a full Total Restoration.
Impact damage scales with the square of your speed, so a gentle tap costs pennies while a real smash runs into thousands.
The consequences are mechanical. Push engine damage past roughly ten percent, and the truck starts stalling on you.
Chassis damage upsets the suspension and makes the rig tip more easily into corners.
Cargo carries its own damage value that eats into your payout.
What you never see is a folded cab, a cracked windscreen, or a bumper hanging off a bracket.
Everything happens on a spreadsheet, never on the mesh.
The Licensing Answer
The explanation the community lands on is licensing, and there is real evidence for it.
SCS has to license every truck it builds, from Scania, Volvo, MAN, DAF, Renault Trucks, Iveco and Mercedes-Benz in Europe to Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack, Western Star and International in the States.
Back in September 2011, before ETS2 launched, the studio published a blog post about its licensing negotiations and described trying to convince manufacturers that having their vehicles in the game was a benefit rather than a risk.
Commenters immediately pointed to the selling point, which was that you cannot hurt anyone and cannot damage the truck.
The Mercedes-Benz saga shows how tight these deals run.
When ETS2 shipped, Daimler had not signed, so its truck appeared under the invented brand "Majestic" until the real license arrived with update 1.18.
Mercedes was the last European manufacturer to come aboard, and DAF and Scania went through their own placeholder stages first.
What SCS Has Actually Said
Pinning down a formal statement is harder than you would expect.
The clearest one comes from CEO Pavel Šebor during a June 2019 developer stream for the Washington expansion, where he addressed the damage question and pointed at manufacturer licensing and brand image.
On the SCS forum, a long-time member paraphrased another part of that talk in which Šebor reportedly admitted the studio sometimes leans on licensing as an excuse, since deformation would have to be built into the engine regardless.
That wording is a forum user's recollection rather than a verified transcript, so I would treat it as a paraphrase.
MudRunner And SnowRunner Make A Mess Of The Theory
Here is what broke my confidence in the tidy licensing story. Saber Interactive's MudRunner and SnowRunner deform their trucks freely.
Bodies crumple, panels warp, and hard-mode players complain nonstop that their fleet ends up looking like a wet napkin after a few maps.
Focus' community forum has running requests for a toggle to switch the visual damage off.
Those games are not built on a roster of made-up brands either.
SnowRunner carries officially licensed Ford, Chevrolet, Freightliner, Western Star, International, and Caterpillar machines alongside its fictional Azov and Voron trucks, and the licensed ones deform like everything else.
Licensing is clearly still a factor, since Ford gets swapped for a fictional brand called AWMG in some regional storefronts.
What SnowRunner proves is that a real truck manufacturer will sign a deal that lets players fold its product into scrap.
The blanket claim that no brand permits deformation does not hold. The nuance comes from the racing side.
Talking to game journalist Justin Towell in 2021, GRID game director Chris Smith framed manufacturer damage limits as a question of plausibility rather than an outright ban, saying a game has to represent the damage that would actually happen to that car.
Read that way, the difference makes more sense.
A Ural clone caked in mud after rolling down a Siberian hillside is on-brand. A brand new Actros with its cab pushed in is not.
The engine, and the mood SCS is selling
Two other reasons deserve weight. SCS runs its own in-house engine, Prism3D, which was never designed for real-time mesh deformation, and rebuilding it for that is a serious job with a questionable payoff.
Performance matters too. When the studio rolled out its Improved Material System in 1.60, its blog stressed that it avoided visual work that would tank framerates for some players.
Then there is intent. These games sell calm. ETS2 won both categories it was nominated for at the first Steam Awards in December 2016, one of which was literally called "Sit Back and Relax".
Spectacular crash damage pulls against that. You can watch the friction play out in TruckersMP, the third-party multiplayer mod, where ramming is a permanent complaint.
Rewarding a crash with satisfying destruction would only feed it.
My own read (and I want to be clear this is speculation rather than anything SCS has confirmed) is that licensing gets cited because it is the cleanest answer to give a forum.
The engine limitation and the deliberately low-stakes tone are harder to explain and probably matter just as much.
SnowRunner is the reason I lean that way. Saber got the licenses and shipped the deformation anyway.
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