Illegal mods, steer clear of them. Simracing604, we stand with you too.

[Steve Worrell]

Mike at Simracing604 bravely spoke out about shady modding practices and now his YouTube channel copyright striked, kinda sus right?

Sim Dream modding group have been selling illegal mods from their website for some time now and it was about time someone called them out for this shady practice. Friend of RaceDepartment Simracing604 took to his channel to raise awareness of this shady business practice of ripping content from other games and legitimate modding teams and selling it as their own. Unfortunately Mike’s channel has received two copyright strikes in the aftermath, what a coincidence. This is totally out of line as the videos in question didn’t violate any copyright laws and is clearly someone trying to seek revenge on possibly the nicest guy in sim racing. Mike doesn’t deserve this, please do whatever you can to support Mike at this time.

But what is an illegal mod and why should you care? Quite simply if a mod contains any parts from another source without permission from the original creator it would be classed as illegal. Likewise, if you try to sell a mod containing licensed content such as brand names, logos, series etc, that too would be classed as illegal. Now imagine both of those things at the same time, that’s super illegal. If this type of activity continues we can all kiss goodbye to the future of moddable titles, we’ve all seen developers moving away from modded content and one can only assume it’s for this reason.

It’s no secret, RaceDepartment is the biggest resource online for modding simracing titles, but we do a lot of work to ensure that only mods which are legal are shared on our site. We get a lot of stick about needing membership to download mods from this site but we ask people to become members for good reason, to monitor who is uploading and what they are uploading. We want to make sure that RaceDepartment is a safe and trusted place online for people to share their original work and legal mods.

We have gained trust with developers by ensuring that we won't share any illegal mods, and if they do get uploaded they swiftly get taken down by the excellent moderation team here at RD. Even without illegal content on our site RD members downloaded a record 180TB worth of mods in the last 30 days alone, yes you read that right 180 TERAbytes of mods. All legal, all safely downloaded. We are working on a new website which will make finding mods a lot easier on RaceDepartment so stay tuned for that, but one thing which won’t change is our policy to deliver mods in a trustworthy and safe manner.

We love the modding community and the incredible work that we see uploaded on RD and across the internet. Which is why we are working on a way to reward modders for great work, more on that soon. But for now, we want to publicly thank Mike at Simracing604 for taking a stand against these shady practices. We want to see more modding titles in the future but it won’t happen if this ripping content from other games continues.

@BigMike8 , you have our full support my friend and we will do everything we can to help you. Thank you to @randomcallsign for indirectly bringing the news of the copyright strikes to our attention through your passionate video. Thank you to everyone for supporting this cause and demanding an end to shady websites selling dodgy mods.

 

[Steve Worrell]

Random Callsign's Video

 

[Spazmok]

And thank you for putting this up

 

[Benutzername]

Had he shared his video on reddit a few days ago before it being blocked? I remember seeing a video about problematic "modders" like it was mentioned here. For me, it wasnt new news, many people know what to lool out for. That does change nothing about the problem though, because many more inexperienced people do not know - and that "studio" still hurts the real modders. I am thankful for racedepartments control system which is working quite well and estavlished this site as the most safe and reliable source of mods.

Its a shame, that this topic has to be brought up but it is definitely needed. Modding is wonderful but hard work. That work should and must be respected and protected.

 

[Joshua Prematta]

Please keep in mind, Sim Dream's URL is registered currently as assettocorsamods.org. While some may not specify the domain suffix in their article, this would potentially put the innocent assettocorsamods.net under fire for something they are not involved with.

 

[GoshiAU]

I saw this just the other day, this is just disgraceful to the racing sim community

 

[LilSki]

Please keep in mind, Sim Dream's URL is registered currently as assettocorsamods.org. While some may not specify the domain suffix in their article, this would potentially put the innocent assettocorsamods.net under fire for something they are not involved with.

This has to be made more clear. Pretty sure they took the "same" domain name to try and seem affiliated with .net which they are not.

Sim Dream = scum of the earth. Been saying it for years.

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

The way I see it, there are two main issues here. The modding issue and the stealing of other people work, which is bad in and on itself.
But what is really bad in this case is using the copyright strike as a weapon for dissent and criticism.
I am a musician and this happens all the time in the music scene on YT. In some cases they are just bands (or their managers to be precise) like Queen and others that simply go around striking channels that often use bits of their songs for educational purposes. Rick Beato, a great music educator on YT even has a policy that he doesn't care if the bands make money out of his videos, as long as he can use snippets of the songs for education.
Yet, even then, bands that should feel lucky to be reintroduced to new audiences, often ruin music education channels to the point where some videos have absolute silence where the song should be.


But much worse than that is the use of a copyright strike to squelch dissent. What has worked in the past were Twitter and FB campaigns, videos and in general negative notoriety along the lines of the Streisand Effect.

See, YT cannot actually use humans to police copyright, so all that one has to do is report a video and YT first action is to dock a strike.

Unfortunately, last time I checked, meritless strikes didn't get punished, but there was talk of making it more dangerous to use strikes as a weapon.

Then there is the old "downvote them to death". These guys have a YT channel. They will delete negative comments, but not the downvotes. I checked and already most of their videos have a 2:1 ration of downvotes. Already people are downvoting them.

If any modders have had their work stolen by them, they could return the favor and copyright strike every video of theirs showing their mod. be prepared to have evidence of your copyright.

There are some Legal YT channels that have covered this issue. If anyone has the time, it would be a good idea to watch those videos and maybe help out 604 with links and connections. I think "Legal Eagle" covered this issue, but I am sure others have too.

Of course, negative reviews on their videos will stay up long enough to affect some of their buyers, so it may not be a bad idea to leave some comments and downvote until it starts hurting. Republishing the video would also be a headache for those guys.

 

[Shovas]

Stirring the pot. Nice. Great work RD. Respect+1.

 

[Vandiemen90]

How can we organize to support Mike? Hes a great YouTuber. This article and Random Callsign’s video provide brave support and are a great start. But is there a way we can organize the community to help? Even contributing to a legal fund to help Mike fight back? Putting it out there.

 

[Shovas]

How can we organize to support Mike? Hes a great YouTuber. This article and Random Callsign’s video provide brave support and are a great start. But is there a way we can organize the community to help? Even contributing to a legal fund to help Mike fight back? Putting it out there.

Like, retweet, and tag YouTube/YouTubeCreators on Twitter, at least.

Like the other videos that have come up in defense of Mike.

 

[Super Isaac]

i manege to get a couple of mods that are the exact same car for free and they are bull the sounds and physics are trash so dont buy them.
Thank you

 

[Paintboxer]

I have been flagging a few of the scammers YouTube videos correctly as the fraud that they are and filled reports into their activity. If anyone feels like doing the same might not come to anything but if more reports are raised on their channel this might make YouTube take more action than just resolve the case and look further into it. Bit of solidarity from all us we can get rid of the trash out of the community or at least take YouTube away from them which would be a big step in right direction.

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

Regarding car brands and models (which is copyrighted), does Sin Dream have the license for that? Shouldn't they be notified about unlicensed pay mods?

I swear that Ruf CTR looks like something from AC - somebody should inform Kunos about this

 

[Enthilzha]

If you do want to give a thumbs down on their videos, their channel is called 'Assetto Corsa Mods' on YouTube... just search for that and 'SimDream' on YT and report their videos etc.

 

[=Fieldzy=]

Sim Dream's steer clear of. I know as I caught them out years ago selling my mod.

 

[Twisteddrift]

This is just so awful. The sim racing community is 95% of the time a great place. But sadly, SimDream is potentially ruining a great part of this community with their selfish acts. I hope that get what they deserve sooner rather than later.

 

[sentry87]

Support Mike simracing604 100% If you read this let us know what we can do to back you up. Hell of a guy and love your content.

 

[delpinsky]

The "copyright violation" thing, it's a farce... basically every idiot can create a fake profile and report copyright infringement on files or videos, even if it doesn't exist, and win. The companies hosting websites for files and videos are so scared by the copyright infringement fear, that instead of checking if something is really illegal, they take it down anyway...

 

[davehenrie]

Please keep in mind, Sim Dream's URL is registered currently as assettocorsamods.org. While some may not specify the domain suffix in their article, this would potentially put the innocent assettocorsamods.net under fire for something they are not involved with.

I think I wound up there just last week when I was actually surfing for the .net location. I thought it felt/looked different. Thanks for the heads up!