Kunos Simulazioni: Co-Founder Stefano Casillo Rejoins Studio

Stefano Casillo Rejoins Kunos.jpg
Image: Kunos Simulazioni
Kunos Simulazioni is getting the band back together, it seems: Co-Founder Stefano Casillo rejoins the Italian studio after a five-year absence.

The Assetto Corsa franchise has become a pillar of the sim racing world: 2014's original title continues to amaze players to this day, of course carried by its near endless selection of mods. Assetto Corsa Competizione is a shining example for a simulator focused on a particular category of racing cars, and Assetto Corsa EVO is looking to break new ground by incorporating an open world in a proper sim.

All three titles are the work of Kunos Simulazioni, founded by Marco Massarutto, who is still the studio's Managing Director, and Stefano Casillo. The latter left the company in 2020 to pursue his own endeavour called Jaxx Vane Studio, focusing on creating a hydrofoil sailing title.

Stefano Casillo Rejoins Kunos LinkedIn.jpg

Image: Stefano Casillo on LinkedIn

In early March 2025, Casillo might have just pulled off the sim racing comeback of the year already: According to an update to his LinkedIn profile, he has rejoined Kunos Simulazioni as Chief Technology Officer. Whether or not this means that Jaxx Vane Studio will take the back seat now remains to be seen, but the position at Kunos is full-time, according to the update.

Stefano himself is happy to be back: "This happened very fast and all I can say is that I am super happy and excited to be back at work with my old friends. I missed the action of having fun with a wheel in my hands and I love what they have been doing with EVO and the vision behind it", he told OverTake.

About 20 years after Kunos being founded, Massarutto and Casillo now reunite just after AC EVO has started its Early Access program. With the aim to have the sim ready for its full release in fall of 2025, this should be a good amount of time for Stefano, who tends to pop into the comment sections of OverTake articles from time to time, to use his strengths in the development of the sim.

Are you excited to see Stefano Casillo rejoin Kunos Simulazioni? Let us know in the comments below and join the discussion in our Assetto Corsa EVO forum!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

He s the guitar player as I remember back in 2014. Good to read! Maybe ACEvo will get more true racing machines and discard this teenager image
 
And for AAC, what next ?
Is dead or not ?
Last patch or not ???
it's not dead at all, I wait for rtx 8090 and intel ultra 985K to play at triple 4K ultra/epic 150% resolution scale....ACC is so beauty and we can't use it at its full potential at all, hardware limitation
 
And for AAC, what next ?
Is dead or not ?
Last patch or not ???
Time will tell. Presumably the team has its hands full with working on ACE at the moment, but in the future, since ACC is still very popular and ACE is aiming in a different direction, I do not see why Kunos would not produce and sell more content.
I would think that many, like me, would be very glad to purchase more content for our beloved ACC.
UE is very demanding on hardware, but time is on its side, as GPU and CPU are getting more performant, UE in ACC is less and less of an issue for many. I know that my new GPU helped tremendously both for pancake mode and VR.
 
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Hey Stefano, long time no see. Yeah we are in a spot of trouble, yeah yeah I know its the publishers fault, no I know you told us it wouldnt work, so anyway how do you feel about picking up your career again?

(Im always suprised when people who have enough money to retire keep doing what they do, I would be too lazy)
 
Premium
Time will tell. Presumably the team has its hands full with working on ACE at the moment, but in the future, since ACC is still very popular and ACE is aiming in a different direction, I do not see why Kunos would not produce and sell more content.
I would think that many, like me, would be very glad to purchase more content for our beloved ACC.
UE is very demanding on hardware, but time is on its side, as GPU and CPU are getting more performant, UE in ACC is less and less of an issue for many. I know that my new GPU helped tremendously both for pancake mode and VR.
In my opinion it would make more commercial sense to release an ACC EVO on the ACE engine once it is finetuned and stable. Also from an operational point of view this would be beneficial.
 
AC EVO will be the ULTIMATE NORDSCHLEIFE game, I like so much this track and road cars, this game is my dream.
Kunos is a 300% trust dev, delivering more than it has promised.
Yeah, it's actually a dream... Hope Stefano turns it into reality...
 
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Ok? You slept bad last night?

Stefano is the creator or netKar, Ferrari Academy, and then AC and part of ACC, both of which ended up being some of the most successful sim racing titles of the last 10 years. So he definitely is one of the major contributors to today's sim racing, not just another guy. Of course people are happy that his talent is back.

Stefano is Italian (like me) and he has a rather outspoken but also very passionate personality, besides having lots of experience with coding. When you love what you do and you are good at it, usually good things happen. So people hope for more good things to happen to our hobby.

You see pictures of cats etc. because Kunos was the name of his cat and is also the logo of Kunos Simulazioni. No cult here, just a bit of cat-related fun.

Money, sure. I hope he is paid well.

How is it that everyone forgets the only reason AC is so successful is because of modders......
 
How is it that everyone forgets the only reason AC is so successful is because of modders......
Err... I did not see the modders work so hard on other sim racing titles. There must be a reason for that don't you think?

Stefano and Kunos developed modding tools for AC and even hired modders into Kunos (Panky, Minolin etc). In short words: modding was a part of how Stefano and the others decided to design the game. AC is modding-friendly. But so much modding enthusiasm happened also because the base game is so good. In other words: no AC, no modding.

And Kunos was just a handful of people, they could not possibly develop all the features of a modern sim racing game by themselves. They decided to focus on a few key features and it was the right decision.

You make it sound like people just woke up one morning and decided to spend their time on modding, closed their eyes, and picked a random game: AC. No, it did not go this way.
 
Now, that’s what I call "good news!" I was starting to lose faith in EVO, but fortunately, the master is back! Thank you, Marco and Stefano, for joining forces again. Kunos is what it is (mainly) because of Stefano. I’m not sure, but I think 'Kunos' was the name of a cat Stefano had. Let’s go!
 

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