Project CARS 2 crowdfunding campaign will kick off shortly after Project CARS is released

Backer here who has access to the forums.

Even if they start developing the sequel right now on full production, the sequel will probably be only out by 2018 to 2019. Considering the fact they took 3 and half years to develop the first game along with numerous delays when it's initial release time frame of Pcars "1" was supposed to be out in 2012, not 2014.

SMS already has plans to support the game with numerous free and paid content for lo term than ranges from free custom championship creator, free cars and also expansion styled DLC such as an expansion on Indy 2015. And also a lot of left over licensed content that was not present in the game yet along with unannounced licenses.

Supporting a live game would need a smaller team compared to the full production of the game. So, they might have a larger team supporting and creating content for that Pcars "1" while a small prototyping team working on a prototype for Pcars "2" which is better than laying off redundant staff.

Even for Pcars "1", there had been many ideas and content that they wanted to include such as dirt racing that includes rally and rally cross, racing series that they wanted to do, better rain and night effects and so on. I fail to see what's wrong if they are actually working on a sequel when they are be supporting the current game well. If they abandon Pcars "1" to work on Pcars 2, I won't be happy with it too.

Most developers and publishers has sequels or other projects lined up to maximise their development manpower where you'll probably know that Sledgehammer games is working on CoD Advanced Warfare sequel now, instead of idling with their thumbs in their studio.

SMS is pleased with their crowd funding model as backers had been contributing quite a fair bit for the game. There are 2 fictional cars designed by the backers for a racing class while drawing inspiration from ACO's regulations for Le Mans. I had done some livery art work that is shipping with the game along with many other backers that we saved months of production from their artist's workload. While the game has been in intensive QA since 2011 where the game is running extremely smoothon many pcs. There is even one community member who has contacts with the automotive industry that has been obtaining car manufacturer licenses for the game. This game is one of the crowd funded games that has been benefitting a lot from this model which I am not surprised if SMS wants to give it another go for their future games.

The source of this information comes from a click bait blog that frequently posts misleading and false information. Unless SMS confirms this, this is very much a unconfirmed rumor.

/r/Games Thread Parent Link - games.on.net