I came across CADEsport in mid-2020, it looked a good possible alternative to Zwift.
Originally the Beta programme was released under the brand CVRcade, which was changed to CADEsport shortly afterwards.
Although the reviews weren’t brilliant, in fact some were pretty scathing, I thought I would take a closer look.
The download was excruciating, over 2hours for a 7.5gb file, a totally ridiculous time. However, it did download and install without any problems.
I first used the game on 17th Nov 2020, and my first thought was, “There is a lot of good things here, but a lot of rubbish.”
One of my first online comments was; “Where is the best place to leave feedback? There are a lot of problems and issues that need to be ironed out.”
The main answer was to add a ticket to the support site – which I did; however, I never received a reply to any ticket raised.
Trying to download the Companion App to my phone, was a nightmare and not achievable. I never did manage to download and install it.
The main problem was that the whole set up was way, way too complicated, and nothing was particularly user friendly.
Nothing was simple or straight forward. I accept the Game was Free to Play, however, if you fancied a new bike it was $8USD in real money. A different kit (Jersey etc) also cost proper hard cash. The in-game purchases were ridiculous.
The revenue stream was based on riders buying & upgrading to new kit.
There were Experience (XP) Points and Levels, but it was never clear what they were for, or what you could do with them.
There were Badges and Rewards, but again no clear path or a list for any of the Badges or Levels. There was no coherent explanation anywhere.
The Support Desk never replied, and posting to Facebook, usually got you an answer to a total different question.
Rides are Races, and Races are Rides, and some are Activities. There seems to be no distinction to anything.
It is very hard just to have a Free Ride – a ride around a course/map getting a feel of everything. The longest course is only 5mls (8kms). It was riding ‘round and ‘round in circles.
Using a Heartrate monitor was nonsensical, even with a supposed explanation from the Head Shed himself. Giving me a rate of over 200bpm, when my max is 160bpm.
The more you dug into CADEsport, the more absurd it became.
One of the biggest problems, that came to light, was that rides did not upload to Strava automatically. Their answer – “Oh, you can upload them manually.”
My final Facebook comment was: “Unless you are going to incentivise the Users and encourage them… they are going to lose interest very quickly.”
And I think that is what happened.
My overall impression, even though the Game was free to play, it was not worth bothering with.
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Update: October 2021
By Jan 2021, there was no longer any feedback being posted on their Facebook Page.
For months, the only posts were from the Company saying they were having a couple of rides on Saturday.
By October 2021, even these had petered out.
And then the big announcement – 8th Oct 2021 – “CADEsport 1.0 Coming Soon.”
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Update: June 2022
A few more races, and by June 2022 it was obvious that the project was ‘dead in the water’.
I queried it via the Facebook Group on the 15th June 2022 and the answer was – it was with “Alpha Testers”. It has all kicked off since then.
We will wait and see what happens.