Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has finally let players buy the Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series outright, ending its run as a car you could only win by hitting the jackpot at the in-game casino.

According to Traxion, the change lands more than a year after the car first appeared as a casino-exclusive reward. Since then, the Black Series has been one of the game’s most talked-about cars for the wrong reasons: not because of how it drives, but because the only route to owning it ran through a gambling minigame with no guaranteed payout. Players who wanted the car had to keep feeding chips into the slot and hope. Now it sits in the regular dealership lineup alongside everything else, and anyone with enough in-game credits can pick it up the normal way.

Traxion’s report does not detail the price or whether any other casino-locked cars are being freed up at the same time, so treat this as a single reversal rather than a wholesale rethink of the casino system until Nacon says otherwise.

Why it matters to sim racers: Solar Crown is not a hardcore sim, but the casino episode is a useful case study for the whole genre. Tying a desirable car to a randomised, chance-based mechanic drew a lot of heat from the community, and the developer has now walked it back after a long wait. That is a small win for the argument that players should be able to earn or buy the content they want through driving and progression, not luck. If you dropped the game partly because of the casino gating, this is the kind of quiet fix that might be worth a second look. It is also a reminder that community pushback on monetisation and progression design does, eventually, get heard, even if it takes over a year.

Originally reported by Traxion.