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

 

[slowpoke]

I HATE to even speculate but, I can't help myself. I have a feeling that an unnamed game developer and others are worried about AMS being a threat to future sales because of a 2015 debacle and more? It's always about MONEY. May be way off base on this but, it's my two cents.

 

[SLuisHamilton]

If it is about F1 mods, why rf2 f1 mods wasn´t take down too?

 

[arniesan]

We can still play the sim', just "hand it over", it is someone else that has the problem then.
Happy racing.

 

[DeoraTwo]

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...

Why would the senna career game be gone? AMS is not licensed while they will clearly have to license for the Senna game for his DAP kart, his Toleman and his Mclaren's that he's driven.

 

[DriftMachine]

I never watched rally or gt races until I got into sim racing. F1 reps shutting down F1 related games over copyrights seems like a good way to kill interest in the sport. I feel this license crap is wrong, because The manufacturers should pay them to feature their cars in the game. Its makes people want or not want said car.

Thanks to sim racing the sport is seeing a slight increase in recent interest. So any attack on sim racing is only hurting the real life sport in the end.

 

[Hash_V8]

"The manufacturers should pay them to feature their cars in the game."

I really believe the same, look what GT did for the nissan skyline, most yanks (or even alot of europe) hadn't even heard of a skyline in early 00's let alone the mighty godzilla.

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

"The manufacturers should pay them to feature their cars in the game."

Although would be the most ideal situation for us simracers, it really doesn't mesh well with companies that consider their products to be works of art.

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

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.

Thing is, unlike Gawker, Kotaku actually know what they are doing when it comes to journalism. It only gets flak because people don't like the opinions from the critics that work for them (Even though it has produced some of the best writing I've ever seen).

 

[David Wright]

On licensing its horses for courses.

When you only make 10,000 cars a year like Ferrari you don't need video games to sell them. On the other hand, if you have a Ferrari in your sim it helps to sell it. For other manufacturers such as Ford, if I remember correctly from my time working for a developer, the cost to license a car was less than most of us spend on our gaming PC.

Same for racing series. When F1 has 400 million TV viewers, does it need 20,000 Automobilista users or even 2 million Codies F1 series users to become more popular? No it doesn't, while does the sports huge fanbase help you sell lots of copies of an F1 game? Yes it does. Same for NASCAR. But Simbin used to be masters at spotting racing series with low public profiles but interesting cars and tracks, where 300,000 people buying a game such as GTR or GTL would have a significant impact on the profile of the racing championship. We do not know how much Simbin paid for their licenses but you can be sure it was far less than an F1 or NASCAR license and its even possible the series might have helped fund the game as part of their marketing.

 

[davks11]

I'm sorry, I'm new in simracing. I do not understand that. Maybe my English is not enough of it. Someone (unnamed company / individual) writes to Steam something about copyright violations WITHOUT details (what, where ...) and it stops the sale of the game in the Steam store? Just write a vague email? That's cool. Why does the Steam and Reiza deals with it? Automobilista is great and I hope that will soon appear in the store again.

 

[xnorb]

I'm no expert and Steam even prohibits to distribute sales figures, but we can safely say that AMS' playerbase is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay smaller than the one of AC / pCars / Codemaster F1.

Regarding "representation in games is good":
Well, this goes both ways.
Somewhere i stumbled over the statement that there's so little damage in video games because manufacturer's don't want to see screenshots of wrecked (virtual) cars or videos in which parts fall off by simply driving on gras or similar.
Or: Who thinks Yaris is a good car after driving the Yaris cup in GT?

Also - if a game sells on your image, then you should get a cut of it.
Games often act in a very grey area when it comes to this.
We all know which cars we're driving in AMS even if they are not called like the real thing.

And let's face it - If AMS had only licensed content or some really fictional cars the playerbase would be less than 20% of what it is now.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Although would be the most ideal situation for us simracers, it really doesn't mesh well with companies that consider their products to be works of art.

Thankfully this attitude is self-defeating, and hopefully it'll serve as a perfect example to other racing rights holders when F1 interest declines further and further.

Screw over the fans and give them little value back to enjoy their interest in your sport, and they'll leave.
It's got to be a two way street where value is shared both ways. FOM seem to think fans owe them something in return for nothing. Weird but that is where it seems to have got to.


Jeez, FOM/F1 should be spending money on an open F1 sim that covers ALL eras, updated over time, and it should all be FREE, since you're getting exposed to ALL their sponsored content/brands etc, and likely to then pay to watch the real races etc.

Gah, it makes me want F1 to fail spectacularly to serve as an example that rampant greed is punished by consumers.

 

[Marc Collins]

Gah, it makes me want F1 to fail spectacularly to serve as an example that rampant greed is punished by consumers.

Too bad the issues related to sim racing aren't even a pimple on the face of F1. Their desire to move all the races to pay TV....now that might have an effect on the fan base of the sport that is noticeable.

How many top level pro athletes make more money from endorsements than from their salaries?

The whole exercise is driven by money. That means distortions of every description will creep in to what should be good for the sport, its participants and its fans. Happens in every sport as soon as the sponsorship $ reach a certain point. F1 is just one of the worst examples because a) it's one of the biggest worldwide, and b) it has a malignant dictator directing the commercial side of the sport for a long, long time.

Look at the venues in F1. Empty stands racing in places few people care about the sport, but someone paid tens of millions to have the race located there for commercial reasons that have zero to do with the sport, but much to do with lots of other things that are very real $. You are watching commercial entertainment disguised as a sport. If you want sport, you have to go back to the pre-sponsorship era, which unfortunately was plagued by lack of attention to safety issues.

 

[Laughing Koala]

It does anger me as I was just getting around to buying the sim as it was pulled of steam so now I am going to have to weight.

 

[mister dog]

http://autoweek.com/article/formula-one/lewis-hamilton-banned-using-snapchat-f1-paddock

Another sign it really is 'Bernies' personal crackdown in action at the moment.

 

[Eero o.]

 

[SLuisHamilton]

It does anger me as I was just getting around to buying the sim as it was pulled of steam so now I am going to have to weight.

lol

 

[Jeff Huber]

This is a little strange. We just got the stadium trucks and the dirt courses and rally cars are coming into their own. I just got an email this morning saying " Dirt tracks are coming to iracing ". Which I am a member of iracing as well. I know everyone is leaning towards the FOM for the problems AMS is getting right now.....but could if be from something totally different?

 

[Dan Costa]

http://autoweek.com/article/formula-one/lewis-hamilton-banned-using-snapchat-f1-paddock

Another sign it really is 'Bernies' personal crackdown in action at the moment.

Its an april 1st fools news

 

[SLuisHamilton]

This is a little strange. We just got the stadium trucks and the dirt courses and rally cars are coming into their own. I just got an email this morning saying " Dirt tracks are coming to iracing ". Which I am a member of iracing as well. I know everyone is leaning towards the FOM for the problems AMS is getting right now.....but could if be from something totally different?

I think that too. None of f1 third part mods in rf2 was taken down. Also Fisi, which is oficial content provided by ISI

edit: why they would take action against the AMS first?