Hoping this is not a sign of things to come

[Kevin Watts]

Like most other virtual racers I eagerly awaited the release of Assetto Corsa and purchased it the day it was released. I was stunned by how polished it was as an alpha/beta/early access game and enjoyed not only the superb visuals but the crisp believable handling of the cars as I threw them around the laser scanned tracks. As each week went by I looked forward to the next batch of fortnightly content and was happy to see each new car and track was crafted as well as the last. Not even the silly bickering on the Steam forums over whose game was better could dull my enthusiasm or the banal criticism’s by the console gamers because you couldn’t ‘pimp’ your car with gaudy body-kits like Forza Motorsport or that the game didn’t already have 1000 cars like Gran Turismo. Each new announcement via their web-site or Facebook page brought more excitement – a new manufacturer license, a laser scanned Nordschleife – the future looks bright…

Then it happened. The first quick and dirty conversion quite literally ripped from another game. News spread and this track suddenly became the hot topic, the ‘must have’ despite it being taken warts-and-all from a game released nearly 10 years ago. Rather than herald this new ‘mod’ it left me despairing for the racing sim community. While many virtual racers and racing simulation sites rightly shunned discussion of this ‘rip’ there were many more making asinine excuses for the author essentially taking this work without permission and grafting it into a new sim. Theft is theft no matter if you ‘get away with it’ or not or even that you give it away freely. It reminded me of rFactor and how when it was released it showed so much promise. For months we saw 3d meshes being shown by talented mod makers working their magic on new cars and tracks made from scratch.

It all seemed so exciting and then conversion tools reared their ugly heads. All of a sudden sites like rFactor Central were awash with poorly ripped work from Grand Prix Legends, Geoff Crammonds Grand Prix 4 among others. Far from pushing the genre forward it felt like we were now going backwards. The same racers who argued over the radius of a hairpin in Simbin’s rendition of Macau were suddenly silent when rFactor became awash with low poly conversions of 10 year old games complete with poorly defined racing surfaces, low resolution textures and cardboard cut-out tree’s and track side objects which screamed ‘FAKE’ as you sped past them. Questionably legal content appeared and then disappeared from the net as lawyers and mod makers played cat and mouse.

Is this really where we want to go with Assetto Corsa? - A step backwards porting generations old content complete with all their imperfections into a next gen simulation? There was a ‘gold rush’ in rFactor when the conversion tools appeared to be ‘the first’ to bring a popular track to rFactor, be it Spa or Brands Hatch for example so why would someone spend time carefully building a track from scratch when others are just ripping it from another game and fudging it into this new sim. Have our expectations really been lowered so far that we’d accept the grave robbing zombification of old content like this?

 

[Chris]

Yes with a small amount of employees its better to focus on really important stuff. They must moderate their forum. This is not a financial problem.

The first sentence in that tweet is: "We have limited resources."

Resources = Money.

They don't want to have to spend too much money on moderating their forums, thus increasing their servers costs, when it could be better spent on parts of the game that matter most.

Yes they are absolutely tight on money.

 

[MRX]

Why dont they accept volunteers then? even EA have volunteer moderators.

 

[Lars Bargmann]

Why is Kunos financial state even relevant?
It is not more ok to pirate something from a financial giant, than a small company.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Why dont they accept volunteers then? even EA have volunteer moderators.

Because the use of that forum, as far as i understood it was to report bugs only.

We are getting way offtopic guys, lets return to the original subject.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

Who says they don't have volunteer moderators already? Fred Joseph isn't actually on the dev team and probably doesn't make a salary for moderating.

 

[MRX]

Also why Virtualr.net is sharing Kegetys conversion of Joux Plane and others dont? and i guess no one has a problem with it, since the news+download link is still there. Judging by the comments alot already play Kegetys conversion. So it's basically dont like, dont download. No need for forum wars and threats.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

So did we ever decide if I'm any less of a scumbag since I did own RBR on xbox or does owning it only count if I had bought it for pc and still had the disk?

 

[Chris]

Ehh. I CBF bickering anymore tonight. I'm going to bed lol.

Lets just enjoy the game and the Nurburgring when it comes around.

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

Yes, I am very serious.
Drugs and software piracy are both illegal, yet easily accessible to most people.
No matter what kind of excuses you come up with, or how wrong you think the owners of the content are, it is still illegal to download and use pirated software.
The stupid excuses are even being mentioned in this thread, like "they make too much money of DLC's anyway" and so on. It is, plain and simple, NOT a valid excuses to pirate something, just because you don't agree with the owner's way of doing business.
Your example about your car and your rims are invalid though, since we are talking talking about people who doesn't own RBR in this thread, basically. Of course you can put whatever rims you want on your car, but if you buy chinese copy-rims, those are probably illegal too (at least in Denmark where I live, we have tons of chinese copy-stuff being "caught" in customs every day, simply because they are illegal copies)

Read my comment(s) again and first of all UNDERSTAND. Cause i wrote the dlc´s problem to the modders who want to sell their mods. Like tuningworkshops. I understand mods as content from fans for fans which want to improve the experience for all. Maybe time is changing and they want now money for things which where for free as long as i play pc-games. If you are ok, that you buy a game and can play only a small part of the game without dlc´s on the releaseday than ok. If your ok with that, that almost all real popular cars in games are now extracontent, then ok for you. Industry checked how big the need for stuff is and so the run their business like that. Go and get yourself rrre or simraceway and then tell me that is it worth the massive cash they want for a virtual car/track. Go play iracing....buy all content cause you have the opportunity to win some cash if you win a championship. Not with me. For me its clear that they saw how the communities of raceinggames managed to play those games with mods/championships/leagues etc and now they say: OK lets do this also but of course earn nice money with that.

 

[Simon Roberts]

Mmmm I wonder if there's a way Kunos can encrypt the track data so that it cannot be ripped with any accuracy, or at all.

I just dont get it why everybody is upset with conversations....ac supports full mod costumization and now? Instead of be happy to drive this fantastic rallystage in ac everybody complain that is ripped from another game? A game which is over 10 years old and has his own great mod support which lets it alive till today.....WHATS WRONG with the community? Is it the "new copyright laws" why everybody **** in their pants? rFactor, GTR, GTR2, SHIFT, SHIFT2, Race07 and all the other sims are just that popular cause you can do that sort of things...Instead i read almost in every simforum if its possibly to sell mods? Do you wanna kill yourself and the "mods" out of the greed for money?!?! IMO its enough...already ****ing DLC kill almost every game today out of the box and you scream for more?

Because its stealing! Would you walk into a shop and take things you haven't paid for?!

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

So did we ever decide if I'm any less of a scumbag since I did own RBR on xbox or does owning it only count if I had bought it for pc and still had the disk?

yes you are, cause you need at least 2 copies of it^^ (like me)

 

[Simon Roberts]

your answer is pathetic. How do you read out of my comment that i dont care about mods? If someone build a track/car from scratch or convert it - both modding. Where i do "whine"? Or is critism in your mind "whineing"? If you want to spend so much money for your virtual racing so became almost equal then real live raceing then something is wrong with you.

Again its stealing.

 

[ENDR]

Again its stealing, not modding.

Those two aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Simon Roberts]

Those two aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

The first sentence in that tweet is: "We have limited resources."

Resources = Money.

They don't want to have to spend too much money on moderating their forums, thus increasing their servers costs, when it could be better spent on parts of the game that matter most.

Yes they are absolutely tight on money.

Resources = HUMAN resource

And of course they dont want to spent much money of running a forum which is first to report bugs.

 

[Lars Bargmann]

Read my comment(s) again and first of all UNDERSTAND. Cause i wrote the dlc´s problem to the modders who want to sell their mods. Like tuningworkshops. I understand mods as content from fans for fans which want to improve the experience for all. Maybe time is changing and they want now money for things which where for free as long as i play pc-games. If you are ok, that you buy a game and can play only a small part of the game without dlc´s on the releaseday than ok. If your ok with that, that almost all real popular cars in games are now extracontent, then ok for you. Industry checked how big the need for stuff is and so the run their business like that. Go and get yourself rrre or simraceway and then tell me that is it worth the massive cash they want for a virtual car/track. Go play iracing....buy all content cause you have the opportunity to win some cash if you win a championship. Not with me. For me its clear that they saw how the communities of raceinggames managed to play those games with mods/championships/leagues etc and now they say: OK lets do this also but of course earn nice money with that.

No matter how you feel about DLC's and mods, it is still illegal to rip and distribute material that are protected under copyright laws. It doesn't matter the slightest if you think the company in question is being rich enough or anything else. Laws are laws, and breaking them cannot be excused with disagreement.
Your ONLY option, if you disagree with the business methods of a certain company, is to not buy their products. It is not a legal option to buy it, and add on to it with illegal stuff, just because you find their business methods wrong.
I have read your comments, and direct my answers at you, although my answers are meant for everybody who is advocating piracy. I am a software developer myself, and know what piracy does, and I cannot be convinced that it is ok ever!

For what it's worth, I actually am a 100% content owner in iRacing...

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

Again its stealing.

So if he own rbr and he is able to make a track from it running on a other programm and dont charge money for that its stealing? in the readme also stands if you dont own rbr your a bad person

So for me modding is all that stuff. Look how far you can go with things. And converting things from one programm to another was and will ever be a big source of modding. Cause its one way. the other is build things from scratch. But whats next? Then the companies will come and say: Ohhh you did a mod of our stuff and now we sue you. Ok, then it became like tuning cars and a big part of moddinghistory will get erased cause of greed for money and power. No silent accept like it was till now. And in 10 years some will make positive publicity again if they say: Look we are so nice, that we allow people to make costum stuff, arent we nice? and the players will scream: YES we buy everything from you cause you are so nice.

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

No matter how you feel about DLC's and mods, it is still illegal to rip and distribute material that are protected under copyright laws. It doesn't matter the slightest if you think the company in question is being rich enough or anything else. Laws are laws, and breaking them cannot be excused with disagreement.
Your ONLY option, if you disagree with the business methods of a certain company, is to not buy their products. It is not a legal option to buy it, and add on to it with illegal stuff, just because you find their business methods wrong.
I have read your comments, and direct my answers at you, although my answers are meant for everybody who is advocating piracy. I am a software developer myself, and know what piracy does, and I cannot be convinced that it is ok ever!

For what it's worth, I actually am a 100% content owner in iRacing...

piracy? did he also included a full copy of rbr? you are talking like he is publishing a full cracked game/programm on a torrent....So if it goes to you NO ONE would make a mod for anything. Cause in all games it stand: Modify the programm is forbidden. Changing parts of it is forbidden. So its only ok when he open up a legal business, rent or buy the sourcecode from the game he will mod and then of course sell it.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Very interesting thread, I have to admit that it has helped me understand the damages that downloading so called mod, can inflict on our hobby.

There is no easy answer, as in one hand piracy prevents new software development in the form of creating new tracks and cars, as it can be for very little gain for a lot of hard work, but on the other hand, the resources available to develop those desired/wanted new tracks and cars are so scarce that we can wait forever to have any new tracks or cars for our newly available SIM’s.

Taking what is not rightly yours is wrong, no if and buts, even for private use.

But the so called modding is also what makes PC SIM so interesting and attractive to many of us, as it allows to build that special SIM experience tailored to our particular taste and desire in a way no developer can even dream of doing, so it is most likely not disappearing any time soon

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

So in the end i come to the conclusion that he "goes over a red light at 3am on a empty street in hillbillyforrest and all withnesses are making fotos with their iphones and yelling: I will give that to the police and post it on youtube so everybody can see what such a bad person you are and hopefully you go in jail for that epic crime.