Quote from BlakjeKaas :

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

This change is only about allowing something that already exists, to be discussed on our forum.

The only change would be that developers and moderators would accept certain threads and posts that have previously not been allowed.

It doesn't have anything to do with PBs as there would still be no official support for mods at this time.

ESP:
Sería genial algo como Grand Theft Auto Online que cada usuario que tenga un VOB mod se le pueda apreciar en linea cuando está en un servidor, todos tendrían su modelo de vehículo.

ENG:
It would be great something like Grand Theft Auto Online that each user who has a VOB mod can be seen online when he is on a server, everyone would have their vehicle model.

GTA:Online blocks any form of mods. You might mean FiveM? The 3rd-party multiplayer?

Probably. Hahaha.

Quote from Scawen :

Could there be a LFS-official VOB mod for the FZ5, which would have a version with Safety Car lights and controls? It would make league racing a little bit better without the need to verbally/chat out unlap instructions.

Also, a little off topic, but is it possible to have an update that allows drivers to enable Pit Limiter on open-config (X) layouts? Currently the way it is set, it only enables on normal tracks but does not on X configuration as it doesn't recognize a pit lane.

Just two small suggestions, hope to hear some news!

As someone who's been rather active in another sim that's been open to modding for a long time, all the talk about copyright seems pretty premature... iirc in like 6 years the issue of a manufacturer going after the creator for "infringement" only came up twice, and both times it was only because there was official content from that manufacturer on the way anyway.
Most car makers seem to regard mod recreations as free advertising, sometimes they are even open to help you make it.

I haven't read all five pages, but its funny to see this discussion finally reach the ranks of the Devs

so some RAC Attack may find its way into LFS after all


tho most of the creative bunch are ofc long gone to other shores

need need need

I think it should return to the way it was, and go back to modded cars being NOT allowed. Due to the likely hood of crashing physics and preventing cheating. If you allow any party of it, then it will ALL be considered allowed, even the parts you do not want allowed...

Instead, custom created cars should only be added through the game itself. This would require some sort of car editor to be added to LFS.

It should be implemented in a way that makes it easier to create and share car files made within LFS, than it is to do the hack method.
Similar to the way skins are shared.

If it is more difficult to hack one in, then people will be too lazy to do it in the clunky unstable manner.

Quote from Bose321 :

GTA:Online blocks any form of mods. You might mean FiveM? The 3rd-party multiplayer?

Yeah, FiveM or Grand Theft Auto Multiplayer (MTA:SA)

It is an example, because there are simulators that you can add your own mod and it can be appreciated by other online players.

Quote from Scawen :

I think we acted too quickly. What I imagined was people making meshes representing real or fictional cars, which would be their own work. It probably sounds silly but I did not understand that immediately we would see cars copied from other games that are almost certainly copyrighted.

I guess we should have discussed it in public first but no harm done, I think.

So how about another rule, only allowing original work, and disallowing meshes from other games, unless proof of permission is supplied? Would there actually be anything to share in that case?


EDIT: Even if we disallow links to copies of cars from other games, we are also unsure about the legal issues of allowing representations of real cars to be advertised here. Maybe it is OK for people to make and share their own versions of real cars when not used for profit, or maybe there are issues there. Though I'd find that hard to understand. I think someone can make a painting of a famous car without permission from the manufacturer. Are polygon meshes representations, like paintings? Maybe someone knows the answers to these questions.

Hello Scawen, I don't know if this has been discussed in the whole thread, but as long as mods are NON-PROFIT, I see no legal issue regarding this. Otherwise, most of the Assetto Corsa, GTA V, SLRR mods would be under legal scrutiny, but as long as there is no revenue to be made, there should be no copyright issues, and if any, it wouldn't affect you, but the person who released the mod to the public. Obviously, if a car is blatantly stolen, as was the case with a highly detailed Toyota Supra mod for SLRR that was converted to GTA V, the modeler has complete legal rights over the model, altough it's non profit. Hope you understand, Cheers.

yes, but Scawen is "making profit of it" if you bend the legal logic enough.

Let's say user X does posts excellent mod of "the car" (created by Y for game Z, not allowing usage elsewhere!). Where did X post it? At official LFS forum (!), belongs to Scawen (!). "the car" attracts new buyers of LFS and makes profit for Scawen.

I.e. the whole new official forum section is designed to attract new LFS customers (people looking for mods), trying to increase LFS profits.

Would be probably lot of fun at the trial to prove that "the car" mod did attract new customers and there was thus damage to Y happening, but you don't want to get that far if you are small independent developer (to go into the actual trial and prove there was no profit on LFS side).

Now if "the car" is posted somewhere on shady forum not connected to LFS team in any way, what can they do about it? Sadly nothing, they may be not even aware of "the car" mod existence and the bump in the licenses sold will be a mystery for them. I.e. it's not Scawen exploiting the work of Y, but the X stealing his work.

And it doesn't matter whether X does make "profit" out of it, he's doing at least damage to Y (maybe Y created the model as exclusive work for game Z and has to pay hefty penalty fine to them if the model appears in different game).

The "not for profit" sounds a bit like "abandonware" ... not a legal term.

For me this sounds like a made up problem.

You can play any moddable game and you'll find some user made stuff that could be arguably copied or not legal, but to be honest i dont think anyone cares about that.


As a player i am just happy that i have more content to choose from, the devs get free work done and if there is a problem they just raise their hands and say: 'hey some guy made this without my knowledge contact them'.

Although there could be some cases but personally i have never heard about copyright law cases in small indie games.

If i were a dev i would just look the other way and let ppl mod my game because it benefits everyone.
And modding is just a feature, you dont make profit directly. For example you dont sell XY's self made Toyota Supra as a DLC car. You wont pay more what the game already cost and even if you say you are making profit from it then lets ban every moddable game.

With this logic skins should be banned too, same gray area. How many skins are there that copied famous cars?

I agree!

I understand, I presume this is why AC's mod section on the official forums is now closed. Perhaps the better way to go would be to NOT disallow mods, but make it so VOB mods shouldn't be able to be posted here, unless it's a fictional car made special as a LFS mod. There are plenty of sites which host a variety of mods for a variety of games though, which begs the question why they haven't gotten in trouble because of that yet.

Finally, if VOB mods are normalised, then a basic framework should be made in order to support modding, atleast in a primitive way. Getting mods for LFS means going to a lot of shady websites, and the quality of the mods is sometimes lacking. That's not to say it's the modders fault, but ultimately LFS makes it very difficult to implement mods into. I hope Scawen will understand the potential of modding, and will become more open towards modding.

That being said, I would love to see some sort of track modding; altough it wouldn't be of the same quality as an "OEM" track from LFS, it would surely be beneficial for everyone. There are plenty of track mods that are very high quality, and if LFS permits the conversion from one game to another, then I believe that the original creators would be glad to make it happen.

Right now making custom tracks is a pain in the butt, and very poor in regards to the quality of the tracks themselves. While I understand that custom tracks were never the goal, thus the minimal "building blocks"; I believe that making it more easy to add tracks to the game would definetly quench the thirst for content of many players, and will stop the annoying "when's the new update coming?" threads.
Cheers

Quote from BeNoM :

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/

It's a made-up problem, there will be no legal issues. LFS isn't even on the map compared to other games with official modding forums, stop kidding yourselves thinking there will be any sort of issues. Just more stagnant progress with LFS.

That kind of thinking will get Scawen sued into oblivion. If users are posting meshes ripped directly from Forza (which is a large number of modded cars out there for many sims), then that's putting Scawen hugely at risk. Maybe the car manufacturers won't care, but Turn10 who spent money licensing and building the car might have their own thoughts.

While it is a completely different animal in terms of gameplay, its still a racing game of sorts (so worthy of making a general comparison)but look at what bugbear are doing with wreckfest, there is an absolutely huge modding community there, whole real life race formula's recreated for the game in some cases, nascar and saloon stock cars being notable examples, so if there are potential legal issues with bringing real life content in game then there must be a way around it.

Quote from gu3st :

That kind of thinking will get Scawen sued into oblivion. If users are posting meshes ripped directly from Forza (which is a large number of modded cars out there for many sims), then that's putting Scawen hugely at risk. Maybe the car manufacturers won't care, but Turn10 who spent money licensing and building the car might have their own thoughts.

No. That's not how it works. It's like someone suing Microsoft because you're able to pirate software on it...

It's very hard to show how LFS would profit off of mods; and someone putting up a case for this for such a small reward would be counterproductive. Forza mods have been ripped and been released as SLRR mods for almost 2 decades now, and noone has sued anyone. These are NON-PROFIT, and fall under FAIR USE COPYRIGHT LAWS. Nobody is going to do anything.

LFS is too small and the costs it would take to pay a legal team for a MODEL which someone made FREE within a framework, which had nothing to do with it, would bear less profit counting the fees with which a legal team would come forth with.

Now if the LFS team would take the SKYRIM approach, which would mean MONETISING mods, then that's when the problems arise. FREE mods are completely fine, as justifying that a softwares purchases were increased by ONE CERTAIN MOD, would be extraordinarily hard and counterproductive.

Quote from gu3st :

That kind of thinking will get Scawen sued into oblivion. If users are posting meshes ripped directly from Forza (which is a large number of modded cars out there for many sims), then that's putting Scawen hugely at risk. Maybe the car manufacturers won't care, but Turn10 who spent money licensing and building the car might have their own thoughts.

No it won't, all the evidence proves otherwise. Jesus lol

Quote from BeNoM :

No it won't, all the evidence proves otherwise. Jesus lol

TL;DR of this thread:
1. developers are at no fault for allowing this as they have no control
2. the people who release mods mostly do it for free, so they fall under FAIR USE copyright laws, alas devoid of any problems law-wise.
3. mods are nice lol you cant prove LFS got more sales because of mods all of a sudden, how do you prove that in the court of law?

Quote from VladM :

TL;DR of this thread:
1. developers are at no fault for allowing this as they have no control
2. the people who release mods mostly do it for free, so they fall under FAIR USE copyright laws, alas devoid of any problems law-wise.
3. mods are nice lol you cant prove LFS got more sales because of mods all of a sudden, how do you prove that in the court of law?

Stealing content from another game does not constitute fair use, it's copyright infringement. Releasing it for free does not change that.

Quote from gu3st :

Stealing content from another game does not constitute fair use, it's copyright infringement. Releasing it for free does not change that.

Yeah exactly. I can't believe how people can talk this easy about it. It's stealing whether you sell it or give it away for free. And saying LFS will never get sued because it's such a small game... wow yeah really great strategy.

Copying, not stealing. There is a difference.

Quote from Evolution_R :

Copying, not stealing. There is a difference.

No. It's intellectual property theft.

I've made some mods using copyrighted mesh - does that makes me a thief?

Is that a theft too (photoshoped Forza Horizon 4 car over a LFS track)?