Vote for rFactor on Steam Greenlight

[Howard]

Image Space Incorporated is unsurprisingly, and rightfully, jumping on the Greenlight bandwagon. They have put their title, rFactor, onto Steam's user-led voting system.

ISI have put out the call for votes for their established title, rFactor, to be added to Valve's enormous digital distribution platform. iRacing, Reiza Studios and Kunos Simulazioni's Assetto Corsa are also alumni of Steam's Greenlight programme.

Should ISI's outdated title be added to Steam? Tell us below!

You can vote for rFactor on Steam Greenlight by clicking here.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

I clicked the link and voted no. Seriously ISI, this game is not new nine years old. How about some love for your latest product instead.

Going to shout lol in my pillow now. Good night.

 

[Ryan Ogurek]

Sorry ISI... what he said.↑↑↑↑↑

 

[Steve William]

Not to mention its not an accurate sim ,
PS im talking about rFactor1,
because rf2 is an ok platform, rf1 is a joke, after they released rfactor tools that converts everything to GSC i shifted to it and that was for rf1.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

I clicked the link and voted no. Seriously ISI, this game is not new nine years old. How about some love for your latest product instead.

Going to shout lol in my pillow now. Good night.

Read Tims comments on virtualr. ISI will outsource the bringing to steam to a 3rd party, so they can continue working on rF2 and waste no time on rF1.
They will take what the 3rd party has learned on bringing rF1 to steam, in case they bring rF2 to steam. So it is actually a good thing.

The actual quote from Tim:
"Pretty much. rF1 is also a lot easier of a platform from a dev point of view, so we have a third party doing it and learning for us, while our devs continue work on rF2 itself."

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

So? Does that make the game any newer? For example SimBin brought their RACE 06 game to Steam eight years ago and have released all of their Gmotor 2 games on this platform ever since. Why not give them a call how they did it? Who is this third party? All four names listed as the creator of this Greenlight entry are affiliated with ISI.

Besides that, from what I've read Reiza is bringing GSC to Steam as well. Same base game, but tons of new content. If learning is so important for ISI, they already have two good references to consult.

rFactor 2 struggles to get a proper following and they push their previous title to the masses. Really don't get it why now.

 

[Daiman Patel]

Oh, come on! ISI need to stop flogging what is essentially a "dead horse" now. Even though they might outsource the work to another party, ISI is shooting itself in the foot a little. They should be trying to push and promote their new / current work, not "outdated" technology. If they really want to do this then why not attempt to Greenlight rFactor 2? Surely that would be a sensible way to go in order to make their current platform more accessible and ultimately more popular.

As Bram has said, what has all of a sudden made them decide to do this now? rFactor 1 is not really much competition for the other (ISI affiliated) racing sims that already are or will soon be available on Steam. Given its age how many sales will it actually make - I would guess not many. How many people who already own the game will buy it again on Steam - once again, I imagine not many. And finally, with all of the choice now available for people wanting to get into sim racing, how many new customers will rFactor 1 find (especially since its graphics are now dated, and people often tend to judge books by their covers and go for whatever looks the pettiest) - for the third time, not many in my opinion.

I've got nothing against rFactor 1 - it's a great game, in which I learned how to sim-race, and there's still some decent content for it, such as the HistorX mod and a few others. But on the whole the game is past its time, with only a core group of dedicated followers as far as I can tell. And this doesn't really warrant Greenlighting in my eyes. I can't imagine many of these guys will buy the game again on Steam, unless ISI turns around and gives them no option by "turning off" the MatchMaker service for standalone installs - just a thought.

One thing for certain is that this will the topic of hot debate amongst sim-racers. I personally and ultimately fall on the side of considering this to be a poor move by ISI. If they had opted to go for rFactor 2 straight from the off this would be a completely different story.

- Brought to you by what would otherwise have been a very boring morning commute to work.

 

[Robert vd Heide]

Great
finally a release of a finalized simracing product
and im sure with all available mods,its got its place ,between the other titles

 

[Boby Kim]

I guess rF1 is still the most popular online race game due to the hunderds of mods. Another very important aspect are pc specs. I guess a lot(!) of people are still running pentiums that can handle rF1 but no further than that. I got some race friends that stick to rF1 like their lives depend on it. Ask me everytime to install rF1 to race with them. When i tell them "no, cause i race rF2 and AC" they respond with: "but rF1 looks just as good and i can still run it on my old pc". They dont want to upgrade as they are too familiar with rF1...

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

Oh, come on! ISI need to stop flogging what is essentially a "dead horse" now. Even though they might outsource the work to another party, ISI is shooting itself in the foot a little. They should be trying to push and promote their new / current work, not "outdated" technology. If they really want to do this then why not attempt to Greenlight rFactor 2? Surely that would be a sensible way to go in order to make their current platform more accessible and ultimately more popular.

As Bram has said, what has all of a sudden made them decide to do this now? rFactor 1 is not really much competition for the other (ISI affiliated) racing sims that already are or will soon be available on Steam. Given its age how many sales will it actually make - I would guess not many. How many people who already own the game will buy it again on Steam - once again, I imagine not many. And finally, with all of the choice now available for people wanting to get into sim racing, how many new customers will rFactor 1 find (especially since its graphics are now dated, and people often tend to judge books by their covers and go for whatever looks the pettiest) - for the third time, not many in my opinion.

I've got nothing against rFactor 1 - it's a great game, in which I learned how to sim-race, and there's still some decent content for it, such as the HistorX mod and a few others. But on the whole the game is past its time, with only a core group of dedicated followers as far as I can tell. And this doesn't really warrant Greenlighting in my eyes. I can't imagine many of these guys will buy the game again on Steam, unless ISI turns around and gives them no option by "turning off" the MatchMaker service for standalone installs - just a thought.

One thing for certain is that this will the topic of hot debate amongst sim-racers. I personally and ultimately fall on the side of considering this to be a poor move by ISI. If they had opted to go for rFactor 2 straight from the off this would be a completely different story.

- Brought to you by what would otherwise have been a very boring morning commute to work.

But imagine they would rush rF2 onto steam now and it doesnt work properly, because they havent the experience and why should a competitor (Reiza, Sector3) help them with it?
Than everyone will say: "Why havent you brought rF1 to steam to check, if you can do it?"
In the current state a release on Steam for rF2 wouldnt be the best, so what is so bad to use this time. It is not a push of rF1 (who said that?). I dont think it is a bad idea to learn something before rushing rF2 to steam. They have to learn a lot especially regarding updates and most important the content/mods/multiple installations for leauges. So why not invest time now in parallel with a third party instead and having some experience when rF2 is ready for steam, than you can push rF2 faster to steam.
From a rF2 project management point of view it is a good option, but your marketing has to communicate it in the way, that it is a testing ground for a later rF2 release.

 

[Daiman Patel]

But imagine they would rush rF2 onto steam now and it doesnt work properly, because they havent the experience and why should a competitor (Reiza, Sector3) help them with it?
Than everyone will say: "Why havent you brought rF1 to steam to check, if you can do it?"
In the current state a release on Steam for rF2 wouldnt be the best, so what is so bad to use this time. It is not a push of rF1 (who said that?). I dont think it is a bad idea to learn something before rushing rF2 to steam. They have to learn a lot especially regarding updates and most important the content/mods/multiple installations for leauges. So why not invest time now in parallel with a third party instead and having some experience when rF2 is ready for steam, than you can push rF2 faster to steam.
From a rF2 project management point of view it is a good option, but your marketing has to communicate it in the way, that it is a testing ground for a later rF2 release.

You make a good point - rFactor 2 should not be rushed on to Steam, especially given the rate at which ISI seems to introduce bugs in the system every time they release a new build. But I still don't see why they need to release rFactor 1 on Steam, just to "test" that they will eventually be able to release rF2 on the platform. Why not just do internal testing to "port" rF2 to Steam, and have a dedicated team of people (like you and I) to help them test the functionality? This way they can work towards their end goal from the start, learning along the way, without making everything public. And if needs be then a 3rd party could do this. It would be best to invest the time in it now, rather than starting with rF1 and then realising that rF2 is a different kettle of fish when they get around to it. Just a thought, but as a software developer I've seen this happen on several occasions - time, effort and money wasted.

I think a technical exercise isn't the only motivation behind ISI releasing rF1 on Steam. Maybe they want to see how well it takes off, to see if it'll be worthwhile releasing rF2 on Steam in an attempt to attain more followers; however, with an old game I'm not sure about the usefulness of the results of such a test.

Anyway, we'll see. If it enables ISI to achieve whatever it is they want to gain then all credit to them.

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

You mean Rfactor 1? That's a joke right?

 

[Decenten]

So what happens if we already own the game
I am not paying for an old game agian

 

[Marko Hannula]

I clicked the link and voted no. Seriously ISI, this game is not new nine years old. How about some love for your latest product instead.

Going to shout lol in my pillow now. Good night.

I think it would still be nice to have it on Steam :/

 

[Darius Hayati]

Got my vote. Good to see more developers seeing the benefit of using steam. Sacrifice a bit of control for easy updates and great sale prices.

 

[Quas]

For me the new sims yet failed to deliver the same amount of fun and realism in racing as the rF1 based titles do so it's still very much relevant.
That being said i don't care if it will go on Steam, have no problem with it either.
If that's what they wanna do,then they got my voice.

 

[Desmond Checkley]

Always nice to see more sims on steam.

 

[Ryan Ogurek]

The thing is, even if they are outsourcing, it still costs money and consumes resources. Money and resources which should be used towards further development of rF2, will be put into rFactor1 instead simply because of a larger user base. Seems like they are grasping for pennies while dollars fly past.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

I dont think money is the reason. They invest money to learn. So I think they measure their return in lessons learned for rF2 and not in Dollars

 

[Ho3n3r]

My question is, what can be so complicated with the deployment on Steam that a small team of devs cannot deploy it themselves, but instead need to outsource this process?

And I don't care that it's such an old game, the more exposure sim racing gets, the better - and it's still superb to play with the right mods. Heck, if it were possible(I know it isn't though), they could even release Grand Prix 3/4 on Steam. I don't see the harm it does, to be honest.