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]

Re: People complaining about having to pay for Nordschleife:

How can you expect a small Italian company with limited budget to give away a laser scanned version of the Nurburgring when you consider all of the costs involved in creating such a project in the first place?

I mean all of the costs:
Flights, accommodation, food, freight costs for the laser scanner vehicle, actually booking the track for a free period when they can go out and scan it, and many more costs involved.

That's on top of just buying the license for it.

Then you look at the time frame in which it's going to be released : September 2014.
Which obviously points to the fact that it's going to take a lot of hard work and thousands of man-hours to recreate the scanned data into 3D representations. Not to mention the fact that this has never been done before.

And finally, the history of the track itself and what it represents. If I have to explain that then you're clearly not a Motorsport fan.

To complain that they won't release it for free is just plain selfish. And it will sicken me if the finished product gets ripped to another game like rF2.

I will happily pay them how ever much they ask for, for the Nordschleife, the greatest race track on the planet.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

@Chris Stacey
I'm with you on this....I am as poor as anybody else but I would happily skip a few meals and put off a couple bills to pay $100 for a laser scanned Nords. I would have paid it to iracing and I didn't even like any of the cars I would have driven on it.
Sadly there are many people that feel the exact opposite of us...they want it free and the thought of Kunos already talking about DLC gets their blood boiling. They are morons, but they are out there.

It will break my heart when it gets ripped for other games. But it will get ripped, we know it, Kunos knows it. And I will be mad at whoever rips it but I won't be as mad at the people that download and play it..If you didn't have AC and had an opportunity for a laser scanned ring that all you had to do was click a DL link and nobody would ever know; thats a hell of a moral test to put somebody up to especially if they already have a torrent site or two on their favorites list.

 

[Chris]

@Chris Stacey
I'm with you on this....I am as poor as anybody else but I would happily skip a few meals and put off a couple bills to pay $100 for a laser scanned Nords. I would have paid it to iracing and I didn't even like any of the cars I would have driven on it.
Sadly there are many people that feel the exact opposite of us...they want it free and the thought of Kunos already talking about DLC gets their blood boiling. They are morons, but they are out there.

It will break my heart when it gets ripped for other games. But it will get ripped, we know it, Kunos knows it. And I will be mad at whoever rips it but I won't be as mad at the people that download and play it..If you didn't have AC and had an opportunity for a laser scanned ring that all you had to do was click a DL link and nobody would ever know; thats a hell of a moral test to put somebody up to especially if they already have a torrent site or two on their favorites list.

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.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

They will encrypt it but they could spend 6 months protecting it and a hacker will break it in 6 days....just the way it is

 

[Chris]

They will encrypt it but they could spend 6 months protecting it and a hacker will break it in 6 days....just the way it is

I don't have the technical know how, but surely there's got to be some way it can be protected. It's too valuable of an asset to be simply stolen and ported to another game.

Personally, I'd press charges on those responsible.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

Yeah, well I see this is a touchy subject for Bram so I am going to quit posting about it...ya'll have a good night.

 

[Chris]

Yeah, well I see this is a touchy subject for Bram so I am going to quit posting about it...ya'll have a good night.

It's a touchy subject for me as well.
I'm getting annoyed just thinking about it now, and the track is still 9 months from release.

Even if the people who rip the track do a shitty job, it's still the principal of the thing. Stealing is stealing, and they're essentially committing piracy, which is an offense punishable with huge fines and lengthy prison sentences.

From some people to say: "Oh, well, if you don't like it then just don't download it", I think is an utterly stupid thing to say because it doesn't change the fact that people are still out there doing it.

Its like saying: "Aww I don't like it when it rains, so I just won't look outside". Well that's great, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still raining outside.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

I don't like the fact that right now somebody's house is getting robbed, right now somebody is getting raped, right now somebody is getting murdered...I don't like it at all but all I can do is tell others to not do those things and not do them myself.

They are still happening though.

 

[ENDR]

From some people to say: "Oh, well, if you don't like it then just don't download it", I think is an utterly stupid thing to say because it doesn't change the fact that people are still out there doing it.

Whining about it doesn't as well. You won't stop people ripping stuff from one game to another, so I really don't see the point of this thread anymore.

 

[Chris]

I hate humans sometimes lol. Why can't they just do the decent thing. Haha

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

I don't rape, break into houses, or kill but I did download this track....I guess I'm not a decent human and I am hated.....oh well...

 

[Chris]

I don't rape, break into houses, or kill but I did download this track....I guess I'm not a decent human and I am hated.....oh well...

No I don't hate you. Lol in fact I wasn't trying to have a go at you at all. Sorry if I gave that impression. I'm just saying, some humans do a lot of terrible things, like rape, pillage, murder etc.
Why should stealing intellectual property be any different?

It may not be anywhere near as heinous a crime as say, murder, but it's still a crime.

 

[Lars Bargmann]

It's a touchy subject for me as well.
I'm getting annoyed just thinking about it now, and the track is still 9 months from release.

Even if the people who rip the track do a shitty job, it's still the principal of the thing. Stealing is stealing, and they're essentially committing piracy, which is an offense punishable with huge fines and lengthy prison sentences.

From some people to say: "Oh, well, if you don't like it then just don't download it", I think is an utterly stupid thing to say because it doesn't change the fact that people are still out there doing it.

Its like saying: "Aww I don't like it when it rains, so I just won't look outside". Well that's great, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still raining outside.

The more correct analogy would be something like "yeah, there's drugs available out there and they are illegal, but I won't be doing any of them."
Drugs are illegal and so are these conversions; we all know both exist, but it really is up to the individual to refrain from using either.
There are plenty of people out there that are smoking weed constantly, and act like it's not a big thing because weed *should* be legal, in their view. Fact of the matter is, that it is NOT legal.
It will be the same with conversions. They ARE illegal, but a bunch of people just won't care.

The best thing we can do is to continue to advocate our stance on the matter, and push out information about why conversions are bad for our community etc.
Information is key, and really; it's all we can do...

 

[Kristóf Kerekes]

I don't have the technical know how, but surely there's got to be some way it can be protected. It's too valuable of an asset to be simply stolen and ported to another game.

Personally, I'd press charges on those responsible.

There might be an encryption at some point to protect a well-built, or to say the most well-build track of all time. But the fact that Kegetys has already modded the sh*t out of the game before it even got released is truth to be told. He has put cars and tracks into the game already at the first week of Early Access, and had it modded at the time of Tech Preview. I don't fear the fact that NOBODY will copy that Norsdchleife. I would worry more about modders repacking the content and putting it up for free as a mod for Assetto Corsa. That would be a slap into the face right by your own hand. I'd care more about that part of piracy, rather than other games stealing it.

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

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?

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

The more correct analogy would be something like "yeah, there's drugs available out there and they are illegal, but I won't be doing any of them."
Drugs are illegal and so are these conversions; we all know both exist, but it really is up to the individual to refrain from using either.
There are plenty of people out there that are smoking weed constantly, and act like it's not a big thing because weed *should* be legal, in their view. Fact of the matter is, that it is NOT legal.
It will be the same with conversions. They ARE illegal, but a bunch of people just won't care.

The best thing we can do is to continue to advocate our stance on the matter, and push out information about why conversions are bad for our community etc.
Information is key, and really; it's all we can do...

Are you serious? how you come to the similarity of games and drugs?!?
I would say if i own a car and i want to put rims from another car on it i will do it. Its MY car!
I own AC and i own RB Rally and so whats wrong if someone give me the opportunity to get the best out of both games?

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Are you serious? how you come to the similarity of games and drugs?!?
I own AC and i own RB Rally and so whats wrong if someone give me the opportunity to get the best out of both games?

Thats the important difference, you own both games. Majority of the downloaders don't and in their case it is a problem as the game is still up for sale, ten years old or not, doesn't make any difference as its lost revenue from those that have paid for the rights and the development.

Where do the "free thinkers" draw the line I wonder? 1 year old, 5 years old? As obviously 10 years old means that copyrights no longer have any value reading through this thread.

 

[Tobias Kluge]

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?

You don't care about mods/modding itself, you just said it yourself.
You just don't want to spend any money at all and than whine all day long about the lack of new sims and advances. Pathetic.

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

Thats the important difference, you own both games. Majority of the downloaders don't and in their case it is a problem as the game is still up for sale, ten years old or not, doesn't make any difference as its lost revenue from those that have paid for the rights and the development.

Where do the "free thinkers" draw the line I wonder? 1 year old, 5 years old? As obviously 10 years old means that copyrights no longer have any value reading through this thread.

Who cares how old a game is? Nobody in reality i thing. I buy for myself a game which is full modable, i use it only for private. I dont do/broadcast lets play videos or share anything with public audience if i play this/or any other game. If i want to make MY game better then i will do it.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

If it wasn't for Amazon you wouldn't even be able to buy a copy of RBR. When you do buy a copy (7 of the 17 copies they had have been sold in last three days) how much of the $5.50 do you think the devs receive? Does the fact that I owned it on Xbox back in the day count as owning the game or do I have to have the disk in hand right now for it to be okay?

You are probably right that the majority of downloaders don't currently have the game, I don't think I have any of the xbox games I bought 10 years ago anymore; I bet most of them owned it on one platform or the other back in the day though.