While other companies do expensive crossovers with Fortnite, Renault's been modding its little electric car into Garry's Mod, Palworld and Stardew Valley—and the mods actually look good
Product placement isn't quite as rife in videogames as it is in movies and TV, but there's still a long history of collaboration. Who can forget how Energizer used Alan Wake to let us know how quickly its batteries drained? Then there's League of Legends' long-running partnership with fashion company Louis Vuitton, which has spawned everything from ostentatious trophy carrying cases to in-game skins. Fortnite, meanwhile, has become a big playable billboard.
Car manufacturers, though, are the most prolific, with racing games showing off everything from the latest supercars to the humble Mini. French manufacturer Renault, then, has its cars featured in plenty of videogames already, but for its latest marketing push, to promote its Renault 5 E-Tech electric car, it's doing something a bit more novel.
It's been modding its car into a bunch of different of games, and while the list features the usual suspects like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite (I'm sure the kids are gonna go wild for a small, yellow electric car and immediately run out and buy the real one), Renault's modders have also snuck it into less obvious games, like Stardew Valley, Garry's Mod and Pal World (where, yes, you can enslave your very own pal-car hybrid).
You can now replace the cat from Stray with a Renault 5 E-Tech, or explore an underwater world in Subnautica inside one—I don't recommend submerging one in real life, though. And the really surprising thing is that these aren't half-arsed efforts.
The Stray skin has been given a futuristic overhaul, so it has Back to the Future-style tyres that flip into thrusters, while the Subnautica one looks like a wee sub, rather than a car that's just been flung into the ocean (for some reason its Nexus Mods listing has vanished, though). In Palworld, meanwhile, you won't just be capturing a sentient Renault 5; it's got a proper creature design, looking like a nightmarish combination of Transformer and Pokémon.
Renault's Stardew mod is the most impressive
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