Quote from BeNoM :

All other games that have/allow mods don't care about licensing and copyright since it's not shipped with the game, why does it matter with LFS?

See: GTA V, rFactor, Assetto Corsa, Need For Speed, etc.

This is not about whether people can make mods for the game. It's about us hosting those mods or allowing our site to be used to advertise them. I'd be interested to see if there are official places where you can download mods for those games (excluding AC as their section was closed). I'm not interested to go searching for them at the moment as I have work to do, but if you could link to them that would be helpful.

As mentioned above, there are two problems.

1) People copying or converting vehicles made for other games then hosting or linking to them here. In that case LFS site can be seen to support copyright infringements. This cannot be allowed and would require strict moderation. This is one of the reasons given for closing the car mods section on Assetto Corsa.

2) People creating models of real cars. This is obviously fine for their own use but there may be questions here. Supposing we have cars made by various famous manufacturers listed on our site, either as forum threads or even in some kind of future in-game mods download system. There is a possibility this can be seen as us profiting from the names, reputation and IP of those companies. Or maybe it really is fine for users to create such content and upload it. We can't take the risk unless this is established.

Is it safe to assume that if a mod were branded as a replica that it would not break copyright, just like if a car manufacturer were to sell a replica car? Selling replicas is legal as far as I'm aware, as long as it's not being branded as original or official.

As long as the thread title has "Unofficial Replica" in it, and the mod is not a straight copy of a model file from another source, wouldn't this be enough? Of course there is a degree of trust that would be placed on the "creator", but as long as the terms and conditions of posting a mod are visible front-and-centre and it's a system comparable to that of YouTube where their terms of upload state you cannot post copyrighted content (along with other strict rules of course), the system could be manageable with moderation.

Quote from mbutcher :

...YouTube where their terms of upload state you cannot post copyrighted content (along with other strict rules of course)...

On YouTube are plenty of mods that break copyrights and are uploaded years ago and still not deleted.

Quote from Evolution_R :

On YouTube are plenty of mods that break copyrights and are uploaded years ago and still not deleted.

That is why I mentioned strict moderation. This is the LFS forum, not the world's largest content creation platform.

> the system could be manageable with moderation.

IMO the system has any chance only with heavy moderation, and then it's questionable whether it will work, but I can't imagine working it in self-moderated way expecting users to post reasonable things, from what have I seen around Internet, there's always few (but enough) people who will not understand the rules and ruin it (and some rare individuals will do so even intentionally, probably mumbling something about fighting against some unfairness, but I guess the amount of clinical-type lunatics is manageable by post-fact delete moderation, it's the mass of just-ignorant users which will swamp it beyond repair).

Quote from Scawen :

This is not about whether people can make mods for the game. It's about us hosting those mods or allowing our site to be used to advertise them. I'd be interested to see if there are official places where you can download mods for those games (excluding AC as their section was closed). I'm not interested to go searching for them at the moment as I have work to do, but if you could link to them that would be helpful.

As mentioned above, there are two problems.

1) People copying or converting vehicles made for other games then hosting or linking to them here. In that case LFS site can be seen to support copyright infringements. This cannot be allowed and would require strict moderation. This is one of the reasons given for closing the car mods section on Assetto Corsa.

2) People creating models of real cars. This is obviously fine for their own use but there may be questions here. Supposing we have cars made by various famous manufacturers listed on our site, either as forum threads or even in some kind of future in-game mods download system. There is a possibility this can be seen as us profiting from the names, reputation and IP of those companies. Or maybe it really is fine for users to create such content and upload it. We can't take the risk unless this is established.

I'm not sure that what you want, but for example mods section on official site of BeamNG https://www.beamng.com/resources/

And for example: https://www.beamng.com/resources/2017-mercedes-benz-c63-s-amg.12335/

This can be seen as BeamNG is profiting from the names, reputation and IP of those companies which they are not.

Quote from From BeamNG TOS :

8.4 BeamNG has no control over design or contents of linked third-party websites and therefore makes no warranties with respect to the currentness, accuracy, completeness or lawfulness of such contents, and BeamNG hereby expressly states that it does not endorse such contents

https://wiki.beamng.com/TOS

Quote from Scawen :

This is not about whether people can make mods for the game. It's about us hosting those mods or allowing our site to be used to advertise them. I'd be interested to see if there are official places where you can download mods for those games (excluding AC as their section was closed). I'm not interested to go searching for them at the moment as I have work to do, but if you could link to them that would be helpful.

https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?forums/general-modding-discussion.26/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/365960/workshop/

http://driftstreetsjapan.com/mydownloads.php (requires owning the game to see this section, can provide screenshots if need be)

https://steamcommunity.com/app/497180/workshop/

https://www.beamng.com/resources/

Thanks for the examples.

A way of making sure that modders are not ripping other games' meshes to put in to LFS is that they need to add a WIP thread showing progression of the model. That way it proves that it is not from another title.

Now to try and break this idea, someone could have posted the images and uploaded the finished mesh that was intended for another sim, and the ripper just downloads all the progress images and uploads the finished model for LFS.

But I think that for the most part, there will be people who play several different sims or part of a larger modding community that would flag the ripped work.

I think that what could also happen in terms of modded cars appearing online is that the host server does a check of each guest's installed cars and if the files match the filesize of it's own version, allow the guest to join, and if there is no instance of the car(s), then the Host sends them through before the guest can enter.

I know that I'm over simplifying things that this would take a fair bit of work, but at least everyone is working to a level playing field and solves some of the issues raised in this thread.

Really hope that this will go ahead but at the same time, if it causes new content to be delayed from the devs by a large extent then I'm willing to wait

Quote from Chunkiegg :

A way of making sure that modders are not ripping other games' meshes to put in to LFS is that they need to add a WIP thread showing progression of the model. That way it proves that it is not from another title.

I believe this is a little complicated
if there is already a model in some game, there is no reason to redo it all again for nothing

basically all mods come from other games like Forza / Need for speed

that's apply from other games mods too, like GTASA / GTAV / beamNG / Assetto Corsa

-
and we all know that it's hard to model a car from scratch.

Well, I don't see a problem in modeling a car because I already work with it, but car modeling is not something that you can learn from one day to the next

I believe that Scawen releasing the mods on the forum people will be excited to create their own and will ignore this fact, for sure.

Gamemodels.ru is there for that with more 5000 models, who's going to hold this?

if they are not released here because of that, they will be shared in groups / youtube / instagram freely as before this conversation

Quote from MacedoSTI :

I believe this is a little complicated
if there is already a model in some game, there is no reason to redo it all again for nothing

basically all mods come from other games like Forza / Need for speed

that's apply from other games mods too, like GTASA / GTAV / beamNG / Assetto Corsa

-
and we all know that it's hard to model a car from scratch.

Well, I don't see a problem in modeling a car because I already work with it, but car modeling is not something that you can learn from one day to the next

I believe that Scawen releasing the mods on the forum people will be excited to create their own and will ignore this fact, for sure.

Gamemodels.ru is there for that with more 5000 models, who's going to hold this?

if they are not released here because of that, they will be shared in groups / youtube / instagram freely as before this conversation

This is really the crux of the problem. Trying to prevent IP theft from other games. Yes modelling is hard and it seems like redundant work, but it's also the best way to avoid potential legal issues due to IP theft.

If they're shared elsewhere then that's fine too, becuase it's still protecting the developers from the potential legal issues of distributing stolen assets.

Maybe strict rules with WIP threads would be interesting as they'd encourage creativity and people building cars specifically for LFS, in the same fictional-ish vain of the built in cars, making them eligible to be included in LFS.

If you had it so anyone posting or sharing their uploads had to accept the terms of service, and also in the terms state that anyone finding any of their copyrighted work they can submit a copyright infringement notice and it will removed if their claim is found to be correct.

You would then only be liable to any legal issues if you did not adhere and ignored the request to take down the copyrighted material
Racedepartment.com have the same for their site

"Intellectual Property and Copyright
If you believe your copyright-protected work was posted on RaceDepartment by one of our users without authorization, you may submit a copyright infringement notification. These requests should only be submitted by the copyright owner or an agent authorized to act on the owner’s behalf. The fastest and easiest way to notify RaceDepartment of alleged copyright infringement is to either use the “report” button, located under each forum post or resource file, or contact us directly via email.
Posts, attachments, uploads or links which contain original game files are not allowed."

But what about other game's players taking LFS content (Blackwood track in Assetto Corsa). Is that allowed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnWR3Lsoo7w

https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/blackwood.2639/

I really doubt its made from scratch.

- EDIT - "Conversion permited by Live For Speed Dev Team"

Is that even true?

Btw is anyone is thinking that converting from one game to another is easy... he couldn't be so wrong.

Quote from Evolution_R :

But what about other game's players taking LFS content (Blackwood track in Assetto Corsa). Is that allowed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnWR3Lsoo7w

https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/blackwood.2639/

I really doubt its made from scratch.

- EDIT - "Conversion permited by Live For Speed Dev Team"

Is that even true?

Btw is anyone is thinking that converting from one game to another is easy... he couldn't be so wrong.

Yes, that's true. LFS' demo content is not encrypted, and thus devs can grant permission to port it to other programs.

I am certain that copyright infringement law is the same for content in games as it is for music and i know that if i was too find music i created and copyrighted then first they are given a take down notice and have to be given a reasonable chance to remove the copyrighted material(or links too them) and this would be the responsibility of the dev's of LFS if the links had been posted here

Quote from Whiskey :

Yes, that's true. LFS' demo content is not encrypted, and thus devs can grant permission to port it to other programs.

The "encrypted" does not matter (the demo content is stored on the disk in the same way as S1/S2/S3 license content).

What matters is the (C) of LFS dev team and their license terms/agreement.

Quote :

But what about other game's players taking LFS content (Blackwood track in Assetto Corsa). Is that allowed?

I'm pretty sure there was official info stating the demo content (Blackwood) may be ported to other games, but I'm currently unable to find it, so as long as you find that info on lfs.net, you can mod Blackwood too. (maybe the info got removed over time, or it was somewhere in forum, but it was official).

We did give permission for Blackwood to be ported to AC.

We like people to have fun (and don't mind if they use other sims) and as it's Demo content we didn't feel we would be losing out in any way. We gave the condition that LFS adverts should be visible in the ported version of Blackwood so we would get a little exposure.

Are (and how are) PB's affected by this change?

Furthermore, what are the possibilities of racing multiple VOB mods at once?
For instance, if you want to have a racing league with 5 different cars with the same performance, would it be possible to use different VOBs for the same car? (5 different models modded on top of the XRT as a base for example)

I'm not really familiar with VOB modding, so ignore this post if this is already accounted for.

It would be nice... not possible at the moment except using XRG, XRT, XRR models inside one XR.vob - but then you have to use (or design) low poly models. It would be best if there are more slots - example AQ, OP, SI, TT.vob etc.

Quote from BlakjeKaas :

would it be possible to use different VOBs for the same car? (5 different models modded on top of the XRT as a base for example)

Like mimicking multiple GT3 manufacturers with only XRR collisionBox and physics, sound great !

Quote :

would it be possible to use different VOBs for the same car? (5 different models modded on top of the XRT as a base for example)

yes, it's possible on Demo cars

we use Cheat engine to read more than 1 more vob, you can find on youtube videos, but is limited because we need replace this in other vob car files

example

if i want 3 types of diferent cars in same XR i need replace the UF/XF/LX.vob to get a stock XR + 3 diferent vehicles

I didn't know it was possible this way. I looks complicated tho.

Quote from BlakjeKaas :

would it be possible to use different VOBs for the same car?

Quote from MacedoSTI :

yes, it's possible on Demo cars

we use Cheat engine to read more than 1 more vob, you can find on youtube videos, but is limited because we need replace this in other vob car files

example

if i want 3 types of diferent cars in same XR i need replace the UF/XF/LX.vob to get a stock XR + 3 diferent vehicles

like this (all vob models existing in lfs "loaded" on xrg (duplicates are with cage or open roof))