Stampede: Racing Royale News

Heyhey racers,

It is with an extremely heavy heart that the Sumo Leamington team announces today that Stampede: Racing Royale will officially be sunsetting this summer.

Due to a variety of unexpected events, live support for our free-to-play kart racing game on Steam and Xbox will cease later this year. Server availability and wider support for the game will end in approximately three months’ time – an exact end date will be confirmed in due course.

Until that closing date, Stampede will still include its usual slate of features, live service options, and rotation of events and content – alongside much more, which we will touch on later in this article.

Before that, the entire Sumo Leamington team want to extend their thanks and appreciation to the Stampede: Racing Royale community. Since the game’s reveal and early playtests almost two years ago, your support and passion for Stampede has been an inspiration to us all.

Whilst we are deeply disappointed to end this journey, we are incredibly grateful for the memories and moments you allowed us to make together. Thank you.


Final Season of Stampede: Racing Royale

Despite this news, we have chosen to roll out our remaining unreleased content for Stampede in the ‘Season 1’ update, which will release on Steam and Xbox in the coming days. We are incredibly proud of this slate of content, additions and improvements, and thoroughly hope you enjoy it.



Prepare for new places to race and new machines to burn rubber with. Compete for glory on four new race circuits, each with distinctly different vibes. Twin Thruway is our new stadium-based track, with split track routes to choose from. Neon Circuit is a moonlit, city-based track with tight corners and shortcuts to uncover, whilst Wentworth Park (below) is a leafy location with flowing corners, perfect for huge drifts.



Finally, Stratos Raceway (below) sends us into space, with anti-gravity elements, new moving obstacles, and a few missing sidewalls – so try not to fall into the atmosphere!



Conquer these tracks in a whopping eight new karts. Shave off those milliseconds in the race-trimmed Sabre Slipstream, McAuley JK4/5, and Wentworth EX14B. Meanwhile, the Anima Turbo R and GRT Clash are larger rides that balance out speed with brute strength. Wanna drive something a bit different? Grab the Korrugated Kardboard, the metal-mad Scrapyard Screamer, or the Snooze Cruiser, which lets you join the action from the comfort of your bed!



Look out for details in-game on how to unlock the new karts, each of which will have its own Kart Mastery tree, full of additional items and perks to earn.

Xbox Achievements, Fresh Season Pass, Events, and More

Over 130 new visual items are sprinkled throughout Stampede, including in the new Season Pass, full of fresh gear to unlock. Also, Special Events gets a boost in Season 1, with added variants available for each event.

By popular demand, the Daily Calendar returns for Season 1 of Stampede and is stuffed with more prizes. Log in on 14 different days to earn a new reward, with day 14 unlocking the Wentworth EX14B kart! Party play is also improved as we expand the maximum party size to 12, and the ‘Suggested Friends’ option will now show accounts of players you’ve recently played against, allowing you to connect with them.



For Xbox players, Achievements are now added, so top up your Gamerscore with Stampede – and earn an exclusive headgear item by unlocking all Achievements. PC players, meanwhile, have more options to customise and optimise their visual setup, and Steam Deck players will see more improvements in performance and visuals.

We’ll share even more details in the patch notes for Season 1 of Stampede: Racing Royale when the update goes live on Steam and Xbox on. Follow us on Instagram, X, and YouTube, where we’ll be sharing more previews of what to expect.

Once again, we hope you enjoy this final Season of Stampede, and thank every single player for your amazing support.

heyhey racers,

The Stampede: Racing Royale team wanted to provide a latest update on upcoming plans for the game. As some folks have noted, it’s been a quiet period for us, with the most recent Dev Log coming in early January, and the last major game update in November. So, here’s a breakdown of what can be shared right now.


In that January Dev Log we shared further details on the next major Stampede update, including increasing the maximum party size, improved visual performance options on PC, and new content to enjoy. We’re continuing to prepare this update. However, unforeseen events across the entire studio have slowed our ability to make progress here. There are now multiple new challenges and factors to overcome before the next major update for the game can be finalised and rolled out.

As you may expect, these new challenges have no set end date, meaning we’re unable to share a date, or time-frame, on when the new update can be expected to launch. We’ve mentioned previously that the ‘end timer’ for Stampede Season 0 in-game is a placeholder, and likely not an accurate gauge of when the update will arrive. That remains the case.

We apologise for the unexpected hold-up and lack of clear timeline, at this stage, for what’s next. The moment that we’re able to give a clear steer when to expect the new update, we will let you know.





Despite this, our team have been working incredibly hard to make that next Stampede: Racing Royale content drop our most exciting and rewarding to date – so we wanted to share more on what they’ve been cooking up.

We’ve already mentioned new features, expansions, and the addition of a new track. We’re hyped to confirm today that this update will include multiple new karts, multiple new tracks, a new PvP feature, and plenty more. Once we have more clarity on the update’s release, we’ll share a full breakdown of what’s coming.

In the meantime, racers can continue competing in our standard three-round, 60-player action, as well as participate in Special Events. We’ve recently increased the amount of Special Events on the calendar, and added Star Chips as an earnable reward for participating in them. That means you can save up Star Chips for Shop items, which continue to rotate with new daily and featured gear.





If you’re looking for more racers to party up with and race against, we highly recommend joining the official Stampede Discord server, where players are connecting daily to race together. We’ve also been awarding the ‘Stampede Star’ role on Discord to outstanding folks in our community, which earns you an exclusive in-game item.

As always, a humongous thank you to everyone for your support in Stampede: Racing Royale’s journey so far. We’ll reach back out with more information as soon as possible.

heyhey racers,

A new patch for Stampede: Racing Royale is rolling out today, introducing a small change that aims to address a common community talking point.

Once players have downloaded the latest patch, they will be able to earn Star Chips - the purple 'premium' in-game currency of Stampede - by participating in Special Events. Each time a player completes a Special Event, they'll receive 15 Star Chips. You won't need to win the event to earn this reward - only complete it. Just like standard Stampede matches, rewards will not be received if you exit before a round is over.

This a first implementation of adding Star Chips as an earnable reward, so we'll be closely tracking feedback from all players on what you think of the change. Your notes will help inform how we proceed with this feature, so we encourage you to share your thoughts across all our channels!

Special Events are available to join from the main menu for a limited time, with multiple events on rotation. Keep checking in to see what's live - or you can head to our Discord server, where the 'Calendar' channel shows when Special Events are scheduled to begin and end.

Thank you to our community for your feedback on this topic, and we hope you enjoy this addition!

heyhey racers,

I hope everyone is safely going through the gears and getting back up to speed for 2025! After a busy year, the Stampede: Racing Royale team is already putting plans in place to keep the momentum up and continue expanding the game.

Updates and content drops are on the agenda for ’25, addressing more community requests, with a sprinkling of surprises too. We’ll be sharing more details on specific updates as more gets locked in – but for now, we wanted to share as much as possible on what we’re working on.



[h3]Glimpsing into 2025 for Stampede: Racing Royale [/h3]

A common talking point within the Stampede community (particularly on Discord, where you should definitely hang out with us) is being able to race with more friends at the same time. Increasing the maximum amount of players in a Party has been a regular request, and this is something we’re excited to bring to the game soon. To help further with finding players, we’re also preparing to re-enable the Suggested Friends option in the Friends menu, after fixing a technical issue. Suggested Friends will show the accounts of players you’ve recently played against, with the option to send them a friend request.

Further options for PC players to optimise the game’s visual settings is also something we’re set to address, with frame rate and v-sync options introduced. Japanese as a language option is planned to be added, alongside at least one new track, which we previewed in December’s Dev Log.

Plus – we’ve been chatting to our players on the topic of creating a method for players to earn Star Chips (the purple in-game currency), to help you grab more items from the Stampede Shop if you wish. Our team are making positive progress on this and we’ll post a detailed breakdown of what we’re adding before it goes live.




[h3]‘Tis the Season [/h3]

A big topic we’re looking to lock down is the conclusion of Season 0 and the beginning of Season 1, which will bring fresh content and rewards. As we mentioned recently, the in-game end timer for Season 0 was shifted out to February 6. A little more work is needed to confirm an exact timing for Season 1’s start, so Season 0 will continue until this is completed. Plenty more is being developed for Stampede: Racing Royale updates, and we’ll continue to keep folks posted!

Look out for more information through the beginning of this year, which we’ll share right here and across our Instagram, TikTok and X channels. Oh, did we mention Discord? That’s the best place to chat with our team and the community on today’s news and anything else. See you on the track!

As more and more players get stuck into Stampede: Racing Royale and look for ways to be the very fastest on track, we’ve been having more community discussions around karts, and their performance stats. These are the numbers you see when selecting karts from the Garage menu!



We wanted to go under the hood on this one and share some extra info on what the kart performance stats mean, as well as some general insight into how we design and optimise the performance for Stampede karts.


[h2]Kart performance stats in Stampede: Racing Royale[/h2]

Kart performance is designed to be simple and easy for players to follow, but also to be thoroughly balanced, and give players options that have genuine value.

Players will also have different styles and preferences for driving, which will suit them better to different karts, so our team aims to accommodate that with different kart handling styles.



Maps also play a factor here – our maps are purposely varied in design, so that some are suited better to a Light, Standard, or Heavy kart.

Let’s look at the five performance stats that every kart has, confirming what each of them represents. Most of this will not come as a surprise, but there’s some interesting detail in there too!



SPEED – The higher this number, the higher the top speed the kart can reach, when not boosting

ACCELERATION – The higher this number, the faster the kart will gain speed from a standing start, or from low speeds, without boosting

DRIFT – This stat dictates how fast the kart can go whilst drifting, as well as how strong the boost effect is after you’ve finished a drift

WEIGHT – The higher this number, the more that other stats such as Acceleration and Handling are negatively affected. It also affects the amount of inertia the kart can have, and how long it is affected for when struck by a power-up or hazard

HANDLING – The higher this number, the faster a kart is able to change direction and generally grip to the track


Every kart has a unique combination of these five performance stats, which can also be improved as you progress through Kart Mastery trees and unlock perks - like this one for the Behemoth Bruiser:




[h2]How are performance stats decided for each kart?[/h2]

Before a kart is added to the live game, thorough testing and balancing is carried out, racing the kart across a wider variety of tracks to ensure it not only feels fun to drive, but also feels different to the other karts.

As you’d expect, the larger karts in Stampede tend to have higher Weight stats, whilst smaller karts are lower on Weight, but higher on Handling and Acceleration. Once the look of a kart is designed, our handling team create a performance setup for it that generally reflects what you’d expect a real-life equivalent to feel like. From there, it’s tweaked and optimised to give it a unique feel for players to check out.



Our team are always tracking feedback and data around kart performance to help us understand if tweaks should be made to existing karts, and to inform plans if any additional karts are being cooked up for a future update. We hope this breakdown on kart performance is useful, and look forward to reading more on how you’re mastering each kart in Stampede: Racing Royale!