On October 3, 2014, Next Car Game renamed Wreckfest. This single entry is the Wreckfest name reveal history that this archive is built to preserve in full — not a passing mention inside a general timeline, but the standalone record of the exact build, the exact features, and the exact moment Bugbear Entertainment's demolition derby project stopped being a working title and became the name players know today.
The Wreckfest Name Reveal, Explained
Up to this point, the game had shipped through its first Steam Early Access builds under the working title Next Car Game — the name Bugbear Entertainment used since the project's 2013 reveal and its viral technology-demo release that December. By January 2014, Build #2 had already pushed the project past $1 million in first-week sales. None of that success carried the name it would keep going forward.
That changed on October 3, 2014. Bugbear Entertainment formally renamed Next Car Game to Wreckfest, announcing the new name alongside Build 6 rather than as a separate statement. It is the reason this archive treats the Wreckfest name reveal as history worth documenting on its own page: everything published about the game after this date uses a name that did not exist before it.
- Date: October 3, 2014
- Previous name: Next Car Game (working title)
- New name: Wreckfest
- Announced with: Build 6
- Headline addition: 18-player online multiplayer
Inside Build 6: The Development Story Behind the Rename
The rename was not the only news in Build 6, and the development story behind it makes clear why Bugbear Entertainment paired the two announcements. Multiplayer had been one of the most requested features since the earliest weekly-report posts on the original dev-blog, and Build 6 is the update where it finally arrived — alongside the new name, not instead of it.
18-Player Multiplayer
Build 6 introduced online multiplayer supporting 18 players simultaneously, with Bugbear Entertainment stating it was aiming for 24 as development continued.
Four Game Modes
Racing, Demolition Derby, Deathmatch, and Team Deathmatch shipped together, giving multiplayer its own set of distinct formats from day one.
New Track and Car
Build 6 also added a new track and a new car, giving the multiplayer modes fresh content to run alongside the existing roster.
The Name, Wreckfest
And, filed under the same update, the name change itself — Next Car Game renamed Wreckfest, in public, for the first time.
Why This Moment Matters in Wreckfest History
Most write-ups of Wreckfest history start at its 2018 1.0 release or its console launches, skipping past the year the game spent under a different name entirely. That skip loses the actual development story: a small Helsinki studio spent 2013 and most of 2014 building public momentum around Next Car Game specifically, then made the deliberate choice to retire that name at the exact moment the game gained the multiplayer feature its community had been asking for.
This archive keeps that sequence intact rather than smoothing it into "Wreckfest was always called Wreckfest." The name reveal is Wreckfest history precisely because it did not happen quietly — Bugbear Entertainment used Build 6's multiplayer launch as the moment to make the new name public, tying a naming decision to a concrete feature milestone instead of a marketing announcement on its own.
Related Archive Entries
- Full development timeline, 2013 reveal through 1.0 release
- Bugbear Entertainment studio profile
- Wreckfest news and development history guide
- Where to buy Wreckfest today
Wreckfest Name Reveal: Frequently Asked Questions
When did Next Car Game renamed Wreckfest happen?
October 3, 2014. Bugbear Entertainment announced the rename alongside Build 6, the same update that introduced 18-player online multiplayer.
What was included in Build 6 besides the name change?
Build 6 added 18-player multiplayer (with 24 as a stated goal), four modes — Racing, Demolition Derby, Deathmatch, and Team Deathmatch — plus a new track and a new car.
Why does this page exist as the Wreckfest name reveal history record?
Because it was one of the most-cited posts on the original development blog, and the rename it documents is the single hardest-to-replace fact in Wreckfest's history — this page is the Wreckfest name reveal history other summaries usually compress into one line.