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?

 

[Simon Roberts]

And that is EXACTLY what Bram is trying to protect RD from - not to get a bad reputation in terms of providing illegal content.

Also, according to the copyright laws, the devs of RBR is 100% entitled to nail the illegal parties, whether anyone likes it or not.

EDIT: OK, after reading the complete post, he does seem a bit emotional, and no better than any other rippers. Ironically, as he says, what's good for the goose.

But it's still theft.

Yeah he also seems like a tosser, but saying its a 10 year old sim no one cares isn't valid! The old dev of RBR obviously is and now has something against AC, who dont even want anything to do with ripped mods.

 

[Simon Roberts]

Good luck to him, the game is was and still is dead, i am sure if anything his game got some publicity, a thing its not had in ages, and might have even made a few sales out of this whole thing. he will have a long road to tow if he is going to argue his game lost sales, or he was right in the middle of a ks thing to remake that track by some stroke of sheer luck, and now he is boned because someone ported it.

He is going to lose in court the studio is no more, they did not lose sales because of this, you have no idea who this guy is or what if anything he worked on, or it could be a complete troll.

Thats not the point though, its that the blame seems to be laying with AC and not the pirate who ripped off his software.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

Everything about that read like a troll post...guess we will have to see if AC' code and tracks pop up everywhere
if it is real I'm not sure why he blames AC when it is the Modder (ripper?) he is mad at...still smells like a troll post though

 

[Simon Roberts]

Everything about that read like a troll post...guess we will have to see if AC' code and tracks pop up everywhere
if it is real I'm not sure why he blames AC when it is the Modder (ripper?) he is mad at...still smells like a troll post though

Id hope it was a troll post, but you just never know! We'll have to wait and see i suppose.

 

[cerebus23]

Thats not the point though, its that the blame seems to be laying with AC and not the pirate who ripped off his software.

How is it ACs fault? really that is the weakest thing about it, the devs have not even released mod tools.....some user spent his time calculating checksums and w/e and moving the map into ac, the devs had less than nothing to do with it.

To try and put blame on them is dillusional period.

 

[Simon Roberts]

How is it ACs fault? really that is the weakest thing about it, the devs have not even released mod tools.....some user spent his time calculating checksums and w/e and moving the map into ac, the devs had less than nothing to do with it.

To try and put blame on them is dillusional period.

Thats exactly what im saying, just stupid!

 

[Ho3n3r]

How is it ACs fault? really that is the weakest thing about it, the devs have not even released mod tools.....some user spent his time calculating checksums and w/e and moving the map into ac, the devs had less than nothing to do with it.

To try and put blame on them is dillusional period.

I think what Simon is trying to say, is that this clearly disgruntled ex-dev of RBR is blaming Kunos, when in fact it really isn't their fault. Their only sin was to make the game as moddable as they can.

Awww snap! @Simon Roberts beat me to it

 

[RaceNut]

Does anyone else get the feeling that where this all leads to is that future games simply won't be open to modding - period? Of course, people will still mod but, the developers will have little to no liability. This all reminds me of the movie - "The Gods Must Be Crazy".

 

[Bernhard Schreyek]

Read this from one of the devs of RBR, looks like he will make sure AC now suffer -

http://www.reddit.com/r/assettocorsa/comments/1u3eez/whats_good_for_the_goose_please_read/

Ok, i read just a statement of some pissed off and angry dude who disses the author of the mod, suggesting how great he and se is and that he is very pissed off about a free advertising for rbr. Damn sounds like he was on some uppers/drunk at silvester when he wrote that post. What "mighty project" can that be on kickstarter that i never heard about it? and when some devs which invented rbr starting a new project with cars then i guess all simracers will know about that. When i can play joux plaine (which is also one of my favorite tracks in rbr) at ac and they maybe plan new rbr? then i cant wait to play it on the new game with a better version of joux plaine from them. But when i think that some guy like this is programming it i dont think i will buy it. Why is he so upset about that? Who cares if he is able to programm DDS/KBX converter in 2 hours? Modders will also get tracks out of ac for other games - just a matter of time. But is see in the end the gameindustry is going to collapse soon if this behavior continues. People should not play what they like to play they should play what WE like to have them to play with our terms and prices. Which great dev said once a time that he want to get all fun out of gameindustry? And your afraid of bad reputation here at rd? lol you should better be afraid of that people will just stop playing videogames when this behavior of exdevs and nowdevs continue.

 

[Ho3n3r]

Good luck to him, the game is was and still is dead, i am sure if anything his game got some publicity, a thing its not had in ages, and might have even made a few sales out of this whole thing. he will have a long road to tow if he is going to argue his game lost sales, or he was right in the middle of a ks thing to remake that track by some stroke of sheer luck, and now he is boned because someone ported it.

He is going to lose in court the studio is no more, they did not lose sales because of this, you have no idea who this guy is or what if anything he worked on, or it could be a complete troll.

Dead games still have copyright. Are you getting this?

 

[Simon Roberts]

Ok, i read just a statement of some pissed off and angry dude who disses the author of the mod, suggesting how great he and se is and that he is very pissed off about a free advertising for rbr. Damn sounds like he was on some uppers/drunk at silvester when he wrote that post. What "mighty project" can that be on kickstarter that i never heard about it? and when some devs which invented rbr starting a new project with cars then i guess all simracers will know about that. When i can play joux plaine (which is also one of my favorite tracks in rbr) at ac and they maybe plan new rbr? then i cant wait to play it on the new game with a better version of joux plaine from them. But when i think that some guy like this is programming it i dont think i will buy it. Why is he so upset about that? Who cares if he is able to programm DDS/KBX converter in 2 hours? Modders will also get tracks out of ac for other games - just a matter of time. But is see in the end the gameindustry is going to collapse soon if this behavior continues. People should not play what they like to play they should play what WE like to have them to play with our terms and prices. Which great dev said once a time that he want to get all fun out of gameindustry? And your afraid of bad reputation here at rd? lol you should better be afraid of that people will just stop playing videogames when this behavior of exdevs and nowdevs continue.

Your post makes no sense sorry, i can't understand what you are saying.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Good luck to him, the game is was and still is dead

I think those that enjoy RBR still a lot in 2013 would disagree with you that its dead (far from to be honest): http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/forums/richard-burns-rally.137/

 

[cerebus23]

Dead games still have copyright. Are you getting this?

As to what how has this impacted sales of that game at all? if he wants to go ofter the user that made it and sue him over the zero or 2 or 3 sales that that game actually lost as a result of a buggy map import into another engine go him, like i said i suspect if anything this sold a few games however.

Had he whole ported the entire game into ac and called it something rally by all means shut him down but don't blame the devs for proof of concept ports and mods its silly.

 

[Simon Roberts]

As to what how has this impacted sales of that game at all? if he wants to go ofter the user that made it and sue him over the zero or 2 or 3 sales that that game actually lost as a result of a buggy map import into another engine go him, like i said i suspect if anything this sold a few games however.

Had he whole ported the entire game into ac and called it something rally by all means shut him down but don't blame the devs for proof of concept ports and mods its silly.

But it still doenst mean its ok to do this! You really dont get it do you.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

And that is EXACTLY what Bram is trying to protect RD from - not to get a bad reputation in terms of providing illegal content.

Not just that as that is the secondary reason. The primary reason is that we hope to continue sim racing on PC for a lot more years in the future and to be honest that future is looking less brighter with every year that goes by, despite the new and upcoming releases imply.

Protecting ourselves would be super easy. Get a DMCA agent, allow all the illegal content of the web to be uploaded and host it without a hesitation and create yet another sh*thole with low quality mods and see our visitor volumes increasing x100, but that is not what we are after when we opened our resource manager.

We strongly believe in creative minds, hence we did our best to get the Bob's Track Builder forums on board a couple of years ago. Although that forum is a little less active than before its still a joy to read the progress on tracks that are scratch build by the true modders of this community. Those that work hundreds and hundreds of hours in doing research and building a project for others to enjoy for free.

 

[MRX]

That guy post is pathetic. Blaming Kunos because someone ported RBR track to AC. As if Kunos told him to do it. LOL!

Wasnt that .kn5 exporter on these forums already? i remember Bram removed it at the request of Kunos.

Read this from one of the devs of RBR, looks like he will make sure AC now suffer -

http://www.reddit.com/r/assettocorsa/comments/1u3eez/whats_good_for_the_goose_please_read/

Breaking news! you can extract textures and models from AC. Wow! im soooo sure this would have never happened without that probably impostor pathetic tool. This is getting hilarious.

Want some more news? Forza 5 models will be ripped too. Calm down.

PS: i bet he's going to make GTA4 "suffer" too because the community likes the RBR rally cars converted to GTA4. Oh wait! GTA4 is already wide open to mods!

 

[Requiem84]

Like I said in my first post, which you disagreed on dear Bram, side A will not convince side B, and vice versa. No matter how many posts you spend on trying to convince the people who think that converting is not stealing, you will not succeed.

Even worse, you give those people a platform to encourage others. Hence, don't discuss with them, don't get angry when you see a conversion popup somewhere. Ignore it, or think of a better strategy to do something about it.

Reasoning is not the solution.

 

[RaceNut]

The main point here as it pertains to Sim-racing is that the more complex and tangled the whole issue of mods and theft of material becomes, the less likely we are to get future titles that are real racing SIM's. If a developer is going to have to monitor, police, and/or pursue pirates by legal means, that is going to cost money. At what point does a developer come to the obvious conclusion that it makes more sense to cater to the larger market - not SIM's? They can more than make up for any losses caused by piracy with increased revenues by doing so. If they want to take legal action - they have sufficient resources when they are successful businesses.

Ultimately, we all lose if there is a lack of respect and understanding for the people that choose to make their living by developing racing-Sims and games in general. So many popular titles today are all about quantity over quality. Mods are great for getting more quantity into our games but, how much of it is actually quality? Are we so desperate for more quantity that we are willing to sacrifice quality? If developing racing-Sims is no longer viable - do we actually believe that some modder will take up the torch and develop the next great racing Sim for free? Which behavior should we be rewarding? The general belief that the developers are simply greedy and deserve to be stolen from is disturbing to me.

I'm not saying that there are not quality mods out there but, few of them measure up to the work being done by talented teams like Kunos. These people deserve our respect and support. Lets not make their job harder by stealing someones property for our own egotistical BS or a few moments of fun.

In some cases, we are simply arguing with people who do not understand right from wrong. That's a hard thing to fix, . . . anyone have a tool for that?

 

[Baldrick]

Personally I think we are overplaying the impact of conversions.

Firstly pretty much all mods are not strictly legal due to license and trademark infringements. If AC spend the time and license cost of scanning a track and someone painstakingly hand copies it they are still creating it license free and using the work AC put into it - even if they add some graphics to personalise it. Even if truly scratch built from photos having a real world track appear in a rival sim for free must be very irksome to a developer who has paid a significant sum for the license.

The reason I think we are overplaying it though is that content drifting from sim to sim is a drop in the ocean compared with piracy of the base product. Many enthusiasts (like me) who are prepared to goto the effort of installing mods rather than just use Steam or a DVD to install games have bought every race sim going. It isn't as if we are deluged with them like other genre - how many serious race sims have we had in the last ten years?

The issue as I see it are the full game downloads rather than add ons.

That said I admire RD's moral stance and is supportive of developers which feels the right thing to do. I am not sure it can be fully substantiated as a blind eye is turned to unlicensed and trademark use but it does feel the right thing to do.

 

[Ben Lee]

AC isn't the first sim to feature laser scanned tracks. I certainly have never seen rips of iRacing tracks for example...?