From the heart, I love SimRail.
Obviously, it has its bad points, like everything, but it is the greatest hope we have had in the history of railway simulation.
I am 38 years old, and luckily or unfortunately, I am a fan of these niche games, in my worst days some of these games help me a lot.
Since flight simulator 2000, Microsoft Train Simulator, or 18-wheeler, I have lived in these worlds of little-used, unpopular, and often outdated simulators due to the little interest they generate in the general public.
Simrail was the step I had always dreamed of. Latest generation graphics, editor, and above all... multiplayer. What more could I ask for when I saw the first trailer and put this game on my wishlist on Steam. When I tried the prologue, I could finally see in my hands that everything was about to change.
After decades of simulators that received little attention from the general public and therefore from developers, we could have a train simulator where all fans could not only play but "share."
That word didn't exist in railway simulation, apart from the Polish simulator that existed before, not in this way, not on Steam, for everyone, not just for one country.
I never cared that the trains were from a country so far from mine, or that I didn't know how to pronounce its stations. I fell in love from the first day with its lines, trains, and control stations.
I could finally drive with real people being dispatchers, just as I have done for many years on flight networks like IVAO or VATSIM. I knew this day would come.
Sometimes small gestures turn a niche game into a much-loved game. It happened to "among us" long after its release, or it has happened to the Euro Truck Simulator saga.
Do you think that truck simulator is such a popular game because players loved trucks before? I assure you, NO. They become random players to truck lovers.
It is loved for its business model and because it was able to turn around a game that had 300 players when it was released to the numbers it has now.
Eliminating communities of other languages does not attract a new potential audience. It may be a saving now, but a loss in the future.
Spanish, German or Polish players, even developers, we have the same love for this niche; if we do not take care of it, it will die.
It may be very fun to put the red light on a person of another language on your server, but the damage is done to yourself because these are people who will never drive trains again. I can go to DCS, MSFS, or IRACING/ACC right now and never play SimRail again. But we love trains, we must take care of each other, or this will disappear.
Thanks to these simulators, I was a truck driver for 10 years, got my real-life pilot's license, and now I'm planning to travel to Katowice to enjoy a great trip on the pendolino.
Once again, in this small community, either we all support each other, or we'll end up in other games, and railway simulation will disappear.
Sorry for the long text; it's just my thoughts. thank you