Who is Racepartment?

Paul Hamwa · Apr 1, 2011

I was thinking I would like to "donate" again. I was wondering who I'm donating to?

Is this a company? A non profit? An association? I don't find any info here on the website other than saying there are 100,000 people registered.

I find more transparency would do this community good.

Thanks

YES! I spelled Racedepartment wrong! LOL

Ryan Callan · Apr 1, 2011

Non-profit, not a company or association in any way.

Speaking of legal transparency and such, that is currently in discussion.

Paul Hamwa · Apr 2, 2011

Ok thanks Ryan,

It seems like most of RD's resources go into Simbin titles. I know they have a huge following, and I like to race them myself, but I like the fact RD promotes smaller games like Netkar and Kart Racing Pro. Recently there was an own category for Kart Racing Pro, and when I brought up the question why it doesn't have Club Races the answer was because Piboso didn't send some free copies to RD yet. ???? Surely there's the budget for 20 euros to buy the game.

Netkar is a different issue, but just as an example we have never had a good practice server for more than a few days before an event. The Race series always has a server up. I get the feeling we're down low on the server slot priority.

--->Can someone please correct the spelling in the title, I can't as I don't have access to it. It hurts my eyes!

Omer Said · Apr 2, 2011

I believe it's because of Offer-Demand rates Paul. Race Series has the most people playing, while other 2 you mentioned, have lower interest.

Paul Hamwa · Apr 2, 2011

Omer Said said:
I believe it's because of Offer-Demand rates Paul. Race Series has the most people playing, while other 2 you mentioned, have lower interest.

That does make sense, but it seems there are way too many Simbin Club events. Not all have full grids, and if you count the people that don't show up, not any different to Netkar, sometimes even less.

I like donating and I'm not asking for anything but frankly Netkar has been more and more neglected and yet practically every single Simbin title going back to GTL which up until recently didn't even work on Win7, has it's own category and tons of club events. And that's not even counting the new Historic category, which is just GTR2 and GTL all over again.

With that logic why not GPL and Nr2003 club races, they're still around and playable?

Bram Hengeveld · Apr 2, 2011

Our resources are very balanced Paul. Yearly we have to cover:
- server rent for a dedicated servers to play on
- server rent for our forum/website server
- software licenses

This comes to an average of over E380 a month that we need to cover.

We don't invest a single euro in games that we run on our servers. We ask a developer/publisher to send us a game to use it as a dedicated server tool and most of the times thats not a problem.

Do you know many free exposre they get for that in return with so many daily visitors.

To be fair I don't understand your angry tone about Netkar, NR2003 and GPL. Did you contact us that you want to volunteer to run these club events? Step up, get things organized and run it yourself here at RD. Sounds fair not?

@Kart Racing Pro: great game but looks like yet another alpha release like with GPBikes that dies quickly and never gets updated again.

Looking forward to see your pm with a motivation that you would like to run the Racing Club for the games above :thumb:

Paul Hamwa · Apr 2, 2011

Bram Hengeveld said:
Our resources are very balanced Paul. Yearly we have to cover:
- server rent for a dedicated servers to play on
- server rent for our forum/website server
- software licenses

This comes to an average of over E380 a month that we need to cover.

We don't invest a single euro in games that we run on our servers. We ask a developer/publisher to send us a game to use it as a dedicated server tool and most of the times thats not a problem.

Do you know many free exposre they get for that in return with so many daily visitors.

To be fair I don't understand your angry tone about Netkar, NR2003 and GPL. Did you contact us that you want to volunteer to run these club events? Step up, get things organized and run it yourself here at RD. Sounds fair not?

@Kart Racing Pro: great game but looks like yet another alpha release like with GPBikes that dies quickly and never gets updated again.

Looking forward to see your pm with a motivation that you would like to run the Racing Club for the games above :thumb:

Sorry if you think I'm angry Bram. Don't understand why though. Isn't this the feedback section? I didn't ask for a full audit of your accounting statement either, but thanks for sharing that.

Is this what you do when lowly members like me pose questions? You call them out on it and say why don't you just do it yourself, you've never done anything for us etc…

Yeah maybe I would like to organize something in the future by all means, I speak French, English and German fluently and maybe I could be an asset to your team, but I'm a little taken aback at your response and reaction.

I am not angry ok, but I do like lively discussions (I think you probably already know that about me), so if you want a wall flower outta me it ain't gonna happen, you'll have to ban me if that's what you want.

GPL and Nr2003 I was just using as an example, but hey why not, if all it takes is to piss off the admins here to become staff then that's good news.

(This is a joke)

best wishes and Viva RD!!!

Sincerely,

Paul

Bram Hengeveld · Apr 2, 2011

I didn't say you didnt do anything for us, but you asked why there are no events for certain games

The answer I gave was really serious: if you want to have them, step up and organize it as somebody has to do it.

We are all volunteers at RD and we do what is in our power to do as much as possible for the community. But people can't expect a small staff team as we have to setup events for all kinds of games. Thats simply not possible next to our other daily activities (we have to eat as well

). But we can always use good people that take this extra bit of work on their shoulders

Péter Bártfai · Apr 2, 2011

To be honest, NetKar events only became really popular after the KS2 was released! When I won the game at the Caption Competition, the first few weeks I was racing against Bjorn, and a few times some more people joined (3-4).

Maybe there could be more events now as there is more content, and I'm definitely going to join one soon

But I do not agree that there are too many Race series events! Tbh I love the fact that there are more for next week! And I'm especially happy to see the GT cars back, and the 2007 WTCC event at Anderstorp as well!

+ In the latest events I raced, there were more than 15 people, which is enough for a sprint race imo. (the exception was the Formula RaceRoom event, but it was fun with the low numbers too

)

Paul Hamwa · Apr 3, 2011

Péter Bártfai said:
To be honest, NetKar events only became really popular after the KS2 was released! When I won the game at the Caption Competition, the first few weeks I was racing against Bjorn, and a few times some more people joined (3-4). Maybe there could be more events now as there is more content, and I'm definitely going to join one soon But I do not agree that there are too many Race series events! Tbh I love the fact that there are more for next week! And I'm especially happy to see the GT cars back, and the 2007 WTCC event at Anderstorp as well! + In the latest events I raced, there were more than 15 people, which is enough for a sprint race imo. (the exception was the Formula RaceRoom event, but it was fun with the low numbers too)

I like Simbin games Péter, I bought ALL of them

Just seemed like a huge amount of club races in proportion to the other games, but who am I to argue with the masses:tongue::tongue::tongue:

It would be great to see you in some Netkar races! I think (my opinion only) the NGP League was maybe a little premature, not enough of us knew each other well enough and there's been too much fighting after every event mostly due to netcode issues. I think regular club races would have been better to focus on. I've had a blast in club races, but the league has become pretty nasty.

I have a bad feeling that right now, for more than one reason, Netkar on RD is going into hibernation:frown: