Automobilista Subject to Copyright Claim

[Paul Jeffrey]

Reiza Studios' newest title Automobilista has been temporary removed from the Steam digital distribution platform due to a copyright infringement claim. The title was removed from the Steam storefront Tuesday night.

Reiza Studios made the following statement to their fans and customers today:

"The Steam store page for Automobilista has been taken down due to a copyright infringement claim which had been submitted to Valve.

As is known, Automobilista packages a variety of officially licensed cars & brands alongside fictionalized, originally created content. The claim in question does not make any specific reference to content present in Automobilista supposedly in infringement of the party´s copyright - until it does, our belief is that it has no merit.

We have already taken the appropriate measures to resolve the issue ASAP, but in accordance to Valve´s policy, the process may take a few days to be completed.

In the meantime time we will continue to progress with the development of Automobilista, and intend to release another Early Access update shortly. The game is available for purchase as part of our Membership packages from our forum store.

Please understand that until the matter is fully resolved, we may not be able to discuss it."​

If you previously purchased and installed Automobilista through Steam, you will still be able to play the current Early Access build 0.8.7r both off- and online.

Dont forget to check out the RaceDepartment Automobilista forum for discussion and news on the Reiza title. Why not have a go in one of our daily Club Races run across a number of tracks and cars with large grids and close racing.

Update April 5th: Renato Simioni made a statement that can be seen here

 

[JeffL]

Every team is lawyer-ed up. So every license is a negotiation. So Ferrari might (maybe, not sure, only a guess) not have the same deal as McLaren. Cease and desist is only the beginning of the process and Reiza or Steam is smart to pull it until they can wade through the red tape. International digital copyrights are the main aspect of the future Trans Pacific Partnership and if passed entities like FOM will gain even more power.

 

[hex]

I think no matter the end result of the issue now, this means one thing for the future: Senna: The Game is already gone.
Hopefully, Reiza17 will still have some of goods in it, though in highly "deformed" shape...

 

[morsify]

Just best wishes to Reiza. Surely some adjustments to the content here and there will satisfy whoever is making the claim/objection and business can resume as normal.

 

[Paulo Gomes]

what nonsense statement... Ayrton Senna is a human, and not property of F1, just look to the example of Emerson Fittipaldi and his team, Copersucar-Fittipaldi, in formula retro.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

I think no matter the end result of the issue now, this means one thing for the future: Senna: The Game is already gone.
Hopefully, Reiza17 will still have some of goods in it, though in highly "deformed" shape...

Not necessarily, the time period would end in 1994 and they can still get anything Senna and license the individual cars he drove, or if not, do different liveries.

I keep seeing a few people bring up "certain users" as triggers. Already, a lot of us - myself included bunching up on FOM may be premature, but how did things escalate this way? That seems far-fetched.

 

[hex]

what nonsense statement... Ayrton Senna is a human, and not property of F1

Nonsense? And you're saying such thing in shining lights of things that are happening as we speak? Isn't the going-on issue nonsense as well? And yet it happens... Ayrton was a human, but the cars he drove, weren't. I'm not sitting in the (sick) heads of authorities, but things are wild these days and nothing, NOTHING is gonna surprise me now. Even if McLaren themselves gonna write to Reiza to give a red light for doing MP4/6.
You can call it nonsense, I'm going to call it my way, if you kindly please...

 

[ThatRacingGuy]

What do you'll mean with the Senna The Game thing?? Am i missing something

 

[Deleted member 130869]

What do you'll mean with the Senna The Game thing?? Am i missing something

A while back a licensing agreement between Reiza Studios and the Senna Foundation was widely publicized. In light of current events affecting Automobilista, possibly Automobilista 2 (Reiza 2017), he presumed whatever the game design for the Senna game was, it likely would be heavily hampered.

 

[Alexandre Costa]

Hope you guys (Reiza) solves this soon, best race sim in the market. Keep the good work!!!

 

[M D Gourley]

I personally am getting slightly emotional about this...it's because I care about Reiza as they bring me great happiness in my life with their fantastic Sim...nobody messes with Reiza...grrr...LOL

 

[Will Mazeo]

A while back a licensing agreement between Reiza Studios and the Senna Foundation was widely publicized. In light of current events affecting Automobilista, possibly Automobilista 2 (Reiza 2017), he presumed whatever the game design for the Senna game was, it likely would be heavily hampered.

And during the crowdfund if I remember right Reiza said the game is too big to stay only on "Senna"
Would be pretty cool to have a story mode in this sim anyway. Tho the end is sad so I'm not sure if people would play it at all

 

[Deleted member 130869]

All I know is, I've made my statement of disappointment and linked it to FOM. I am not going to write anymore as we don't know the claimant or any details, everything we talk about is speculation. Some silly discussions and self-undulging/righteous postings that have evolved from it, are very poor and can only be detrimental. It's completely different to when there is an insider or publicly available facts or statements.

 

[alexSchmurtz]

Yep, I think we all need to wait and see what comes out of this. I'm just really sad for Reiza: they put a lot of time and passion in this, they made nice progresses throughout their various games and it seems they found a very nice alchiemy there, that pleases many people. The more I drive it, the more I enjoy it, with a big grin on my face! I hope they sort this out quickly, without big losses for them. Keep fighting!

 

[Michael Stead]

Has made an appearance on kotaku

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/04/brazilian-sim-racer-taken-off-steam-due-to-copyright-claim/

 

[PATR10T]

This is not a matter that has value being discussed in detail publicly I´m afraid.

I will say this though - the anger here is indeed misplaced. Companies can claim rights when they perceive there to be an infringement of their IP- this does not necessarily mean there will be a legal dispute. Usually just adjusting to address what has been objected to can and often suffices. We might do just that if the complaint is further specified - at this stage it hasn´t been, which is why for now we believe it lacks merit.

The real troublesome issue here is why we have been targetted to begin with - generally speaking, we are too small to get in the radar of any major company, and despite some pseudo-legal argumentation going on in this thread, legally there is nothing fundamentally wrong or even different to what is done in other, substantially bigger games (not just in racing).

What has become strikingly evident is that there are some disgruntled individuals in our tiny community doing the scrutinity work & delivering it for these companies - just because these people seem to think that´s where the fun in simracing is now. With DCMA rules being what they are, if companies or their monitoring agencies are delivered with an argument on a platter, irrespective of its merits, it´s not difficult to use and even abuse that to claim infringement.

If this trend continues (and by now it would be sensible to take that for granted if we want to stay in business), the immediate and long-term effects might well be a further departure from any fictionalized content that may become subject to such complaints in favour of officially licensed content. This will drive costs up, possibly affect our ability to deliver interesting driving experiences, and potentially offset the balance of the product to such an extent that we are forced to redesign it and the business model around it. This is unlikely to affect AMS much, but it will certainly impact our next product where the stakes are already higher.

I´ll be completely frank and state that depending on how things develop from here, this may change how we approach the business altogether. There just isn´t enough money in the type of products we´ve been making to be worth this kind of hassle.

there some much bigger games who made fictional things based on real one in their games and i never heared about such a thing about them... they just called it with different name and sold it and never a copyright blabla happened... its very strange that such thing now happens on such a small company like you are reiza...

btw remembering the flat6 from enduracers where porsche asked to not release it... in the end the car is 1:1 a 997 cup jut renamed to flat6 and so everything was legal even with a model whats very accurate...

till now i dont know what really happened on you who or why you were called to break some copyrights but i think if its because of the formula cars then this is the biggest bullshit ive every heared... your cars are different and the names are different too... and i cant believe someone can have a copyright on some colors on a car... then i would protect the color blue to me and everyone whos using a blue color i will come with the law -.-

Yep, I think we all need to wait and see what comes out of this. I'm just really sad for Reiza: they put a lot of time and passion in this, they made nice progresses throughout their various games and it seems they found a very nice alchiemy there, that pleases many people. The more I drive it, the more I enjoy it, with a big grin on my face! I hope they sort this out quickly, without big losses for them. Keep fighting!

and i hope reiza will stand above such **** and continue with everything... if they have some higher costs on next game i dont care because i know when i buy it i buy quality...

 

[P*Funk]

Has made an appearance on kotaku

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/04/brazilian-sim-racer-taken-off-steam-due-to-copyright-claim/

I love it. PRC goes around talking crap about Kotaku but when Kotaku reports the story it bypasses quoting unreliable bloggers and instead quotes only the facts without any attempt at speculation.

So much more respectable coverage.

 

[Colin O Callaghan]

Personally I think this has been done or helped by the other sims, simulations etc what ever they're calling themselves nowadays. The Fact that they keep coming out with half ass early access games that are not up to scratch or not what they promised, these feckers seen TheWondeffulReiza blow their socks off with an older engine has truly fecked them. Seeing that they can't beat the awesome physics and ai of Reiza, well put 2 and 2 together I mean if this was truly because of F fecking 1 why is asset to forum still full of F fecKing F 1 mods as project cars f1 skins. Automobiles ta still has F1 V10 content in the forums FFS. to me it seems Like a deliberate and direct hit on beloved Reiza, think about it, not one of the other sims or mad flecks studios etc are affected,
Just saying

 

[David Wright]

'''' why is asset to forum still full of F fecKing F 1 mods as project cars f1 skins.

How many times do people have to point out this is nothing to do with mods or 3rd party skins?

 

[Hash_V8]

How many times do people have to point out this is nothing to do with mods or 3rd party skins?

Yeah it must totally not be linked, first AMS mods get hit, then the game, totally out the realm of possibility that they could be linked, like what others are trying to say, almost all the sims (far bigger devs) have modded F! content, so why aren't they being hit? ok the f1 20xx mods was oddly hit too, but why nothing else, its very targeted, you have ppl posting email address to FOM and encouraging ppl to grass and be filthy narks, I mean seriously the race sim community has some utter mental little fools amongst it, they'd love the fact that their actions caused this, Narks, it's not "conspiracy" stuff, just blind teen angst and filthy filthy narks,

 

[TurcoMaldade_]

bad publicity is good publicity.
this will end up being good for Reiza.