The Undercut Racing Manager Hotfix 0.5.4-4 — Steam Workshop and Various Fixes

Hotfix 0.5.4-4 released 11 September 2026 (Build 25248871). This is the fourth patch since the Early Access launch on 3 September 2026, and it marks the debut of Steam Workshop support alongside important stability and gameplay fixes gathered from the first week of player reports.

Steam Workshop

The Steam Workshop is now live. Players can subscribe to mods, track updates to their favourite community content, and browse the workshop from within the game. Mod creators can publish updates directly to their workshop items without needing to distribute files manually.

This is the official mod distribution channel for The Undercut. Previously, mod sharing relied on Discord links and manual file placement. The workshop integration means saves with community mods are easier to share, and version control for mod packs becomes straightforward. When a mod author pushes an update, subscribers see it appear automatically.

To access the Workshop, open the Mods section from the main menu. The interface lists subscribed packs, browse options, and your local mod folder status. Packs downloaded from the workshop install to the same mods/ folder used by manual drops, so existing workflows remain valid.

Mid-Season Signing Improvements

The mid-season driver market received targeted fixes in this build. Several edge cases that caused incorrect behaviour in the GP-10 window and academy promotion system have been resolved.

Reserve-seat promotions now fire correctly when a Primary driver receives an injury. Previously, the game could silently fail to promote the reserve driver, leaving a Primary seat vacant for race weekends. The logic now properly evaluates injury duration against remaining calendar rounds and triggers the correct promotion path.

Academy graduates can now be promoted to Secondary seats without triggering contract conflict errors. A graduating driver who had pre-agreed a race seat sometimes encountered a mismatch between the pre-agreement and the formal promotion step. That conflict is resolved: the pre-agreement now correctly governs the promotion outcome.

GP-10 window stability received attention. The window now correctly holds three offers per turn for the full weekend, rather than resetting the offer count prematurely. Previously, some players reported that the offer count refreshed inconsistently across turns, making the GP-10 feel unreliable. The count display now accurately reflects remaining offers throughout the window.

World Data Stability

A crash could occur when browsing World Data with a large number of career seasons completed. The underlying cause was a memory management issue that compounded over long save files. Players with twenty or more seasons in a single career were most likely to encounter this. The fix clears the leak at its source, and long-running saves should now browse World Data without incident.

If you experienced this crash before updating, your save file is intact. The fix applies on load; no special recovery steps are needed.

Infrastructure and Balance Confirmation

Infrastructure spend lock is confirmed as working as designed: player infrastructure upgrades remain locked during the season. The confusion arose because the UI showed upgrade buttons even in-season, but they were non-functional. This update confirms the intended behaviour and removes the misleading in-season buttons from the player interface.

This is not a change to game rules — it is a clarification. AI teams also freeze mid-season, matching the player. If you were waiting for an in-season factory upgrade that never appeared, that is working correctly.

Mod-Pack Isolation

Community mod packs now load in isolated environments, preventing cross-contamination between user-created content. Previously, loading multiple mod packs could cause shared assets — such as driver names, team identities, or calendar entries — to blend incorrectly across packs.

The isolation means each mod pack now maintains its own asset namespace. This is particularly important for players who run fantasy championships alongside historically themed packs. You can now run multiple packs simultaneously without worrying about unintended name collisions or rule overrides.

Save Reliability

Several underlying save-system improvements reduce the very rare case of a corrupted career file. These changes address rare race-finish timing issues that could, under specific circumstances, cause an incomplete write to the save file. Players who encountered save corruption should restore from their last manual backup.

As a reminder: closing the game window, pressing Alt+F4, or using Steam Exit all trigger a save in 0.5.4. Manual saves before major career decisions remain good practice.

UI Scale Refinements

Further refinements to UI scaling on high-DPI displays address edge cases beyond the 0.5.4-3 adjustments. The 0.5.4-3 patch fixed common 4K and ultrawide configurations. This follow-up handles mixed-DPI setups where the game window spans monitors with different scaling factors, and fixes a remaining issue where the lap counter could be obscured on certain HUD scale settings.

Known Issues

The team continues to track reported issues on Discord and the Steam community forum. Known issues at time of release include occasional delays in the news feed and minor animation hitches during long race sessions. Neither is game-breaking; both are on the fix list.

If you encounter a bug, use the in-game reporter (Help → Report Bug). The reporter now automatically attaches the correct log file and configuration, which speeds up diagnosis considerably. Discord and save files remain the fastest route to a fix.

How to Update

Steam downloads the update automatically. If you are on a metered connection, you can pause updates in the Steam client settings. The build number displayed in the bottom-left of the main menu confirms 0.5.4-4. The previous build displayed as 0.5.4-3.

Previous Hotfixes

• Hotfix 0.5.4-3 — UI scale refinements, strategy screen fixes, mid-season signing improvements.
• Hotfix 0.5.4-2 — infrastructure spend confirmation, GP-10 window stability.
• Hotfix 0.5.4-1 — native-resolution fullscreen fix, puncture margin, World Data crash.

For the full Early Access launch notes, see 0.5.4.