A New Central Assetto Corsa Modding Discussion Forum

Paul Jeffrey

Premium
AC modding Forum Closes.jpg

Kunos Simulazioni have released a statement informing the sim racing community of the imminent closure of some areas of their popular modding forum on the official Assetto Corsa forum.


Always a favourite location for modders to discuss and upload the latest and greatest community created content for Assetto Corsa, news of the forum closure will be a major blow to many fans of the sim.

With the normal discussion threads remaining open as usual, community members are now looking for a new home to discuss the many aspects of mod creation for the Italian racing simulator. Citing continual drain of developer resources to ensure forum compliance rules, Kunos have taken the decision to remove access to that particular portion of the site while focusing on more pressing issues with the game.

As many players are already aware RaceDepartment have a popular Assetto Corsa forum, where many individuals meet to discuss the game and access our sizable downloads library. As well as aiming to bring you all the latest news regarding the game and offering a safe and enjoyable club racing scene, RaceDepartment are delighted to inform you of our new "Modding Corner" sub forum for all your modding discussion needs! We at RaceDeparment are aware of the void created by the fallout from Kunos latest announcement and have created our own discussion area, a place to meet and share, discuss and ask questions about the world of modding in Assetto Corsa. As RaceDepartment look to further support the great work of our community modders with upcoming content in the form of our focus interviews with some high profile modders and our new regular mod roundup articles, we have taken this step in an effort to aid and grown the outstanding community mod scene.

Please see below the full Kunos announcement:

"The main purposes of the Assetto Corsa official support forum are helping users to solve issues with the game and give them the proper way to report bugs or suggestions to the developers. Thanks to the big success of Assetto Corsa, many users joined here, even just to talk about the game. Day after day, the forum turned in a community and we opened a new “Chit-Chat” room in order to have a place where to discuss about Assetto Corsa and other games, sometimes closing an eye on the off topics.

The big step happened with the creation of the modding section. Nowadays it is a place where to discuss about creating contents and apps for Assetto Corsa. We love the creativity and high quality achieved by some modders. However, the same section was targeted by some users that, careless of our rules and ethics, advertise contents ripped from other copyrighted software, making conversion without any authorization by the original creator and basically without any respect towards those modders that make their work from scratch. This has led to interminable discussions on the subforums resulting in a huge loss of time for the devs, moderators and those users that are very active in our community.

Due of this state of things, we as Kunos Simulazioni decided to close indefinitely the “3d Models”, “Tracks” and “Liveries” subforums of the modding section. We are sorry about that, but at the same time we know that there are many well known communities out there where modders can continue to share their work, while we can focus better on real issues. We see the modding section as a place where to discuss about “HOW TO modding” and not a download section, it is not its purpose.

That said, releasing a track, car or liveries is no more possible on our forum. Users can discuss about cars, tracks and everything else modding related in the general modding subforum. Links to external sites of which there is even just the suspicion of “not legit content” will be removed without any warning and proper measures will be taken. We will be very strict about this."

Looking for a new home to discuss and upload your creations? Interested in becoming a part of the sim racing community here on RaceDepartment? Pop over to our RaceDepartment Assetto Corsa forum and contribute in our new Modding Discussion Forum, browse our downloads section, engage with our vibrant community and have a go with one of the many user created car setups we have available to download right now.

RaceDepartment have a popular a club and league racing programme for Assetto Corsa players. Take a look at the Assetto Corsa Racing Club and Leagues for details of upcoming events and leagues here on RD.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you very much for stepping up.
I am less than impressed with the tone of Kunos. Telling the Mod scene which generates and maintains A LOT of interest in their Sim, by the enhancements that are produced, to effectively 'go away', leaves me a bit sour..

I hear you, but they are responsible for the content that is published to their website, and maintaining that responsability requires a lot of time and money. RaceDepartment can handle that as they have structured themselves around being a forum that hosts stuff, but they are hardly as visible as Kunos are and don't actually develop games themselves.

Even then, RaceDepartment gets to deal with legal stuff and it is expected that they moderate their forum. Kunos has to moderate their far more busy and hostile forum whilst facing a lot more prying eyes then RD does... And if you look at what happened to both RD and Reiza in short succession, the smaller guys aren't immune either, and Reiza was certainly upset by the F1 skin issue. All those legal shenanigans ultimately take time away from people who just want to make games.

So ultimately deciding not to deal with that is the most cost-effective issue.
 
Last edited:
A clearer explanation of Kunos decision has been given by Aris:
http://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/i...focus-on-message-95.33408/page-27#post-700413

I'll try to reply to you, but the main thing is that you guys have to be willing to understand our position. Obviously it's up to you to believe me or accept my explanation.

So here it goes.
As I said above, even though KS is still a very small company, we are very proud to have created a world wide brand with AC. AC has sold hundreds of thousands of copies on Steam and consoles version will bring even more. AC is mentioned on big magazines and websites articles together with historic names as Gran Turismo and Forza motorsport... this for us is something that still amaze us and makes us very proud.

Unfortunately with great powers come great responsibilities (I always dreamed to say that, yay!). Italian laws specify that on a moderated and private (i.e. need registration) forum, the owners of the forum are co-responsible for the content of the post of the forum users. We live and have our base on an amazing country, famous for its culture, art, nature and... food. But at the same time also famous for it's bureaucracy, complex law system and confusing law decisions. So when we get complains from other big titles about converted material in our forums, or when we see illegal mods in our forums, or when we are asked to make the referee between mod teams wars, stolen material, personal issues and such, then as you can see it is time for us to take action.

As you can see, it's not a matter to simply moderate, because even if we had the time to do it (we don't), we're still in a very grey area and can't deal always with it. So because of some community members behaviour and because of legal uncertainty and because of the need to do something about it, we decided to do the "bad guys".

Is our decision bad timed? Probably yes
Did we knew it would be unpopular? Certainly yes
Was it really necessary? Absolutely yes.
Could we have done it differently? Probably yes, we are not perfect, we do errors and this is something to learn from.
It is a very painful decision (your passion on this thread shows it clearly) that we had to take. I hope you can now understand better why.

Will we stop encouraging or supporting mods? ABSOLUTELY NO!

Thank you for all these years of great mod material and supporting AC. We try really REALLY hard to bring you the best and hope that our future news will alleviate a bit your frustration.


I can confirm that italian laws system is tricky, complex, abstruse and convoulted. Also, a trivial civil lawsuit usually lasts from 5 to 10 years, with crazy legal costs, and for the italian law you are guilty unless yoy demonstrate the opposite.
Believe me or not, it's a nightmare to deal with it for who has to manage a company, and I can understand that the commitment to sustain a potential legal attack (and they're dealing with boundless bugdet colossi as automotive firms, FOCA, etc.) can jeopardize the existence of the company itself.
Now the question is: it has been there for such a while, and Kunos realized it only now?
Yes, but apart the fact that late is better than never, the physics teaches also that "the bigger they come, the harder they fall"...

By the way, @RaceDepartment, thanks for for being there!
 
Last edited:
Now the question is: it has been there for such a while, and Kunos realized it only now?
With the due release of the AC console version Kunos gained major visibility, so they maybe realized hosting copyright infringements on their official site might lead to some problems.
You know that Kunos don't operate with a fixed schedule of operations. So maybe some other aspects are treated in a more Mediterranean approach, too. ( I'm German, you know:D Kunos:"Ah, Tedeschi..." :))
 
I'm sure everything will be business as usual in the coming days. We lost a couple people who I think acted prematurely. Once the dust settles we might get them back.

My stuff has always been hosted here so it is nothing new for me. I'll be posting a riverside wip thread at some point but for now I'm busy working on the next update. I might spend some time this weekend assembling my tutorial thread over here though. Even though that kind of stuff will remain over there I don't really want so deal with two different forums.

In the end a big thanks to RD for giving us a home. I know I like to watch projects develop and I'm sure many of you guys do too.
 
This is a much better place than a support forum to handle a mod sub forum, some were already here, it is going to be easier to follow what is happening on the Assetto Corsa mod scene now than most everything will be at the same place.
Most people are reluctant to changes, it seems the Modder are not different, who would have know, you would think Modder would embrace change as change brings opportunities.
Thank you RD for steeping up and welcoming the vibrant AC mod scene.
 

Latest News

Online or Offline racing?

  • 100% online racing

    Votes: 72 7.4%
  • 75% online 25% offline

    Votes: 101 10.4%
  • 50% online 50% offline

    Votes: 142 14.6%
  • 25% online 75% offline

    Votes: 267 27.4%
  • 100% offline racing

    Votes: 389 39.9%
  • Something else, explain in comment

    Votes: 4 0.4%
Back
Top