FIA Cracks Down on Modding Groups

[Ryzza5]

Perhaps this is related to Gran Turismo partnering with the FIA a few months back...

 

Appearantly the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) have send out a “cease and desist” letter to several modding teams working on mods resembling FIA governed cars and series. A cease and desist letter is a request to a party to halt an activity and not take it up again or face legal action. It is rumoured that more unauthorized modding projects are under investigation, including hardware mods. In essence, it is not yet known if this crusade will only impact the open wheeler series, or if it will apply to more related racing series.

 

 

One of the modding teams that where recently hit are the F1ASR team. They where working on an a Ferrari 643 F1 and Formula 1 1992 mod. After receiving the cease and desist letter, the team announced that they will suspend work on the mods till further notice.

 

 

It looks like this will not just stop there. A month ago we at Bsimracing received a cease and desist letter from a well known brand requesting us not to post or promote any to their brand related software and Hardware mod news. VirtualR.net received a similar Formula 1 related “cease and desist” request only a few months ago.

 

 

The last few years it has been discussed and debated that with the growing Sim Racing popularity also the rules of the game could get stricter. A while ago the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) announced a long term partnership with Polyphony Digital (Gran Turismo), revealing that there might be an FIA sanctioned Sim Racing championship in the making. With federations such as the FIA involved Sim Racing could soon become a sport. As with all sports, advertising and sponsorship will have their influence on what can and cannot be done.

 

 

The Modding scene also changed allot the last few years. With high detailed and higher quality models, the risk of being associated with a product is becoming apparent. High quality mods could also be seen as competition for licenced material by the established companies. Then there are trends such as payed modding and sponsored leagues and teams that might open up a can of worms when it comes to copyright infringements and people creating revenue with it. The multiple cross-platform conversions that appear lately have also raised attention and could become an issue in the near future.

 

 

The Sim Scene is taken more serious and is now recognised as a business platform by many marketeers out there. While that is ultimately a good thing, it will change the way the established companies look at our little niche community. The bigger the market becomes, the more opportunities it will create for marketing. These opportunities will generate a bigger competition. If Sim Racing and the commercial world get even closer, there might be no room left for ” tolerated art” such as modding. Sim Racing livery services such as used in LFS and the “Trading Paints” project for iRacing might become a topic of discussion soon. Fingers crossed.

 

FIA sends out letter to modding Teams - bsimracing

[CLR-GTR]

Shouldn't they be busy more with dulling down the Formula Dyson rather than banning mods on which in most cases I assume nobody makes a profit? Or is this related to payware mods?

[Ozzmcom]

how I imagine FIA

[TDUZoqqer]

Mods are bad, I am also strictly against modders! They should get a life instead of modifying games developers have worked for years.

[hassan1995]

Can't tell if sarcasm or...

[Guest MrLolololXD]

[RRacer]

Well, there's 2 kinds of mods... There are the conversions of already existing beutiful car models for games that don't have them like TDU1, this is actually a thing i regret having supported a bit. And i have supported it for a long time....

 

The other kind are the modders who build stuff from scratch. Like the people who make the F1 and GP2 mods for Assetto Corsa, which I think is what the FIA is bitching most on too. They are great people who try their best to give an accessible racing experience to a lot of people, and they make some damn great cars and experiences.

 

Seriously, this is the biggest lalalala move from the FIA since years...

[TDUZoqqer]

^

 

I think the exact opposite tbh. The scratch made models are made by an independent person, other than existing game models, which had required millions of dollars for the license - just to bring them in the game, also these models are ripped of from games, which is highly disrespectful to the game developers of the models, and which also could cause a legal argument between the two developers. It's like turn10 will sue Rockstar games (i can't take Atari, as it's not sueble for me), and telling them "our models are in your games, seriosly what the heck?"

 

Can you follow me?

 

I mean as you may know I made a car model from scratch and converted it to TDU. I hardly doubt Atari would make the effort to stop me, because they can't get anything from me. Other than Turn10 from Atari (okay, they can't get anything from they anymore aswell, but you know what I mean). That's why Atari would stop the pure converters, because they don't want a legal war with another developer.

[RRacer]

Just to confirm, you think the FIA is mostly after the people who convert the IP from game developers to other games?

[TDUZoqqer]

I may not read the article properly, but I could imagine this as a reason.

[mau92]

I can't believe this! I mean, anybody is getting anything from their mods. It's been a discussion over at AC forums because the guys of Formula Corsa Modding (FCM) had had problems because of their F1 mod (now called FC1). Now we might have 3 paths, modders stop developing, modders start to charge for their work (Flight sim-like) or brands such as Audi, Ferrari, etc do the same as FIA.

Please FIA, mind the real world racing community.

[Automotive Gaming]

Turn10 should sue all the people all over the world that use Forza models, but they don't do such things, and I think they won't, because they know how to make money in a good and legit way (great games) and don't care about this stupid childish stuff, nuff said. ;) FIA is trying to help Gran Turismo because no-one is buying it anymore like in the past, that's the reason imo.

[T1M]

Seems a bit odd, shouldn't they be focusing on real life issues really....

[superhyper]

Someone's gonna get hurt if Gran Turismo will soon be the only game with FIA content in it... :fuming: That's the worst move that I've seen from FIA in a while and I actively watch F1!