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

[Ben Lee]

Certainly part of the problem is Youtube's copyright claim system which is abused daily. People should be petitioning youtube to revise their policies and procedures.

What I will say is; be careful what you wish for. What we dont want is to draw unwanted attention to the "modding scene". If the legal hammer comes down for sim dream, then thats great, but if then they go after regular modders who are working in that nice grey area of free mods, then that would be a huge shame.

 

[dwightyone]

Just my own views on this and don't expect any agreement of it...

To be honest if you don't have permission from the car manufacturers and track owners to use their stuff then all modding is illegal - even if its classic cars distributed for free here on RD, surely. Try and ring any car manufacturer or track owner asking for permission, and no doubt you will be told no or directed to a licensing department where you would have to pay a licence fee and with that would come conditions. It's all well and good trying to get the likes of Jimmy B to highlight it to the smaller sport teams of the various car manufacturers, but if the main guys further up the hierarchy of said car manfacturers realised there their stuff was being exposed and represented to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide without any restraints modding will come to an end.

Don't get me wrong I download the mods here on RD by the truckload and love doing so, but free modding here on RD is on borrowed time as are paid versions everywhere else. Once AC has aged to point of being ancient, and now with rfactor2 being taken over by a business who may look to montize everything like any business would - then bye bye modding.

IMO: Maybe just enjoy it all while you can, and don't indirectly bring the end of it nearer by making too much noise over the likes of simdream to the car industry - don't give them the infamy and historical credit for bringing the whole modding community down with them - they would wear it like a badge of honour.

In the meantime jJust distribute their stuff everywhere for free in non RD forums like reddit, direct peeps there and delete the evidence as soon as said deed is done. No matter how rich people are humans are cheap skates by nature and most will always try to get it for free.

And yes it sucks if you poured your life into making a car mod representing a real brand and distribute it for free only to find out on someone is monetizing it but tbh, aside from a moral claim, you have no legal claim as no license fee to the car manucfacturer was paid in the first place.

Squeeze the likes of simdream out of the market and distribute their robbed stuff for free.

 

[Peter Kerényi]

Free mods of real cars are technically illegal, but make no real harm to the copyright owner in most cases, free advertisement we could say - this is RD modding.

Selling licensed stuff without license is a big no, as you make money from something you should not - that's why we have the Ferrucios and Darshes and Bayros, etc. which circumvents this problem.

Editing or using somebody's free mod/sound/physics without permission or even credits is a big no in the modding community.

Editing or using somebody's free mod/sound/physics without permission or even credits, and/or converting licensed assets from another commercial product AND ESPECIALLY SELLING IT AS YOUR OWN without a license or permission is a giant no legally as well as in the community - this is where SimDream is at.

 

[Mekonrider]

Modding on the PC in general is hit and miss on whether anything happens to the mod. GTA mods are widespread but you can't do anything that will harm their online money stream. At the same time Take2 shut down the RDR emulation.

I think AC and RF2 will be last of the easily modded sims and we will get more and more Iracing and Raceroom type stuff. Hopefully at some point the source code for AC will leak and we'll be able to keep it alive but tbh it's still looking good with CSP and SOL.

As for Simdream aren't they from Moldova? Probably untouchable unless you have money to pursue them.

 

[Vilmos Vas]

I think the most shameful act in this case is not only Sim Dream stealing mods from other modders (and I get that those are also illegal, technically speaking) but the fact that they go after websites, forums and youtube channels, trying to (in many case, successfully) destroy them, just because they have voiced their opinions. This is what really makes me angry, about this whole story.

 

[pabletux]

Just seen today, just now, more skins for their 2020 F1 mod, We do not support that people, but we can put skins here, I mean, what the..

 

[bgil66]

I'm on your side Mike, you're the best!

 

[VFX Pro]

95% + of all modding assets are usually bad and subpar from the main game. It's not worth the developer's time and it's complexity to manage it i my opinion. Few games support modding for those reasons. I'd rather pay the developer and extra $5 or $10 to get the proper content and keep the developers afloat.

 

[Tarmac Terrorist]

This is as iv'e said on RD and just herad another YT Sim channel say an "Abhorrent" Situation.
However it is absoloutely amazing to see the community galvinsing over this in solidarity, looking out for each other and saying "NO! THIS SHALL NOT PASS!" (sorry was thinking of Sir Ian Mckellen).

RD, the simracing groups on Discord and just about every other simracing YT channel have all come forward not only in defence, but to re inforce and remind us that this is a great community, and we want it to stay that way!

As for what led to this, those on the darkside sometimes don't even know they are there, so hopefully its even good for them and hopefully they've heard the wake up call. Looking forward to seeing Mike back in the game (pun fully intended), and the real modders getting the credit they deserve for their amazing work!

The best thing that could come out of this is we get Mike back, Sim Dream realise they are on the darkside and basically stop being c&^%s, bugger off and the real modders get the credit they deserve! and Youtube takes notice of the huge noise that we've all made and decides right we need to sort out our system so it can't be abused like this.

 

[Mekonrider]

95% + of all modding assets are usually bad and subpar from the main game. It's not worth the developer's time and it's complexity to manage it i my opinion. Few games support modding for those reasons. I'd rather pay the developer and extra $5 or $10 to get the proper content and keep the developers afloat.

I get what you're saying but I'm also really appreciative of stuff like the 1500cc GPL and the 1967 GPL mods. Add in tracks that just aren't 'money' to main developers and there's a place for modding. Taking a Ferrari 158 around Fontenay in the early hours of the morning in VR is something I won't get anywhere else.

Thank god these people haven't started stealing tracks.

 

[stenovitz]

Just my own views on this and don't expect any agreement of it...

To be honest if you don't have permission from the car manufacturers and track owners to use their stuff then all modding is illegal - even if its classic cars distributed for free here on RD, surely. Try and ring any car manufacturer or track owner asking for permission, and no doubt you will be told no or directed to a licensing department where you would have to pay a licence fee and with that would come conditions. It's all well and good trying to get the likes of Jimmy B to highlight it to the smaller sport teams of the various car manufacturers, but if the main guys further up the hierarchy of said car manfacturers realised there their stuff was being exposed and represented to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide without any restraints modding will come to an end.

Don't get me wrong I download the mods here on RD by the truckload and love doing so, but free modding here on RD is on borrowed time as are paid versions everywhere else. Once AC has aged to point of being ancient, and now with rfactor2 being taken over by a business who may look to montize everything like any business would - then bye bye modding.

IMO: Maybe just enjoy it all while you can, and don't indirectly bring the end of it nearer by making too much noise over the likes of simdream to the car industry - don't give them the infamy and historical credit for bringing the whole modding community down with them - they would wear it like a badge of honour.

In the meantime jJust distribute their stuff everywhere for free in non RD forums like reddit, direct peeps there and delete the evidence as soon as said deed is done. No matter how rich people are humans are cheap skates by nature and most will always try to get it for free.

And yes it sucks if you poured your life into making a car mod representing a real brand and distribute it for free only to find out on someone is monetizing it but tbh, aside from a moral claim, you have no legal claim as no license fee to the car manucfacturer was paid in the first place.

Squeeze the likes of simdream out of the market and distribute their robbed stuff for free.

That's exactly what I alluded to with my sim nightmares last night and mentioning Motorsport Games and my guesses, just look at the tendency at the other main sims.
As I've stated plenty times on RD forum, simracing for me personally IS all the free enthusiast mods, or at least 90% of the time.
You describe very well my fear, but sadly I don't think it's too far off the window


This is the fragility of a niche e-sport but if free enthusiast modding is to last, we (modders and users of the mods) need to stand together not only here at RD but at more visible platforms as well.

 

[sikjar]

Please don't take actions and wake up the companies behind the sims. If you want to take legal actions, make sure the modders pay taxes AND have registrered their property first.

Seems to me that the bad actors are doing a lot of damage already. I think most of us feel it's time to take out some of the trash. If there is collateral damage, we can accept that.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Would it be an idea for RD to stop hosting assets for stolen content? So, no skins for ripped cars, no AI lines or CSP night settings for ripped tracks?

I find it quite perplexing that RD (quite rightly) removes ripped content, but then in the same breath makes some of these 'mods' better by providing embelishments. I know a lot of the time these addons are simply an attempt to polish a turd, but even so, as a community we shouldn't be making these rips more appealing.

EDIT - I don't mean to criticise the staff who run RD. I understand how few of them there are, and how much work is involved in checking each and every new upload.

 

[RearView Racing]

 

[fantasy137]

Maybe someone of you here knows... What I do not get is why a "company" lets say, which they are in a sense, can cause strikes carried out by Google/YouTube when there is not evidence of fraud???

I thought they can only do claims like with copyrighted music, which causes your video be uneligible for ads and monetarization. Strikes are like with twitch when you violate the rules of the platform. This can ofc be reported from the outside, but why can a business do that? Like they just say this and that is illegal and Google immediately pulls out strikes without checking? Is there no review system? Will they strike asap and review after and remove if needed?

This practice really does not make any sense as it would mean that censorship is possible on YouTube. So also governments or others could make videos disappear if they feel there is an opinion called out they do not like.

 

[mister dog]

95% + of all modding assets are usually bad and subpar from the main game. It's not worth the developer's time and it's complexity to manage it i my opinion. Few games support modding for those reasons. I'd rather pay the developer and extra $5 or $10 to get the proper content and keep the developers afloat.

With the cars maybe, but we can thank our lucky stars that we have hundreds of fantastic track mods. Just imagine AC or Rf2 without them

 

[SuperMonacoGP]

This is all very new to me, so my apologies if this has already been addressed, but do we know who these "Sim Dream" people are or where they are located? Their site seems conspicuously devoid of any names or addresses - that's very odd even in The Internet Age. Most places in the world, if you are running some kind of money-making venture, there is an expectation to have done the requisite paperwork and tax filings. I see they are listing prices in Euro by default, can we assume they are physically located in the EU? If that were the case, are they appropriately collecting/reporting VAT, for example?

This could end up unraveling and going very, very badly for whoever is on the other side of that web store.

Moldavia

 

[mopro]

For those of you who have a Twitter account, please Tweet @TeamYouTube with a tweet in similar form to this

https://twitter.com/x/status/1368574378489700354

Anything helps, and hopefully the issue will get enough publicity that YouTube will actually step forward and reverse the strikes.

Done! I haven't use my twitter for ages, glad I still have it

 

[mopro]

For those of you who have a Twitter account, please Tweet @TeamYouTube with a tweet in similar form to this

https://twitter.com/x/status/1368574378489700354

Anything helps, and hopefully the issue will get enough publicity that YouTube will actually step forward and reverse the strikes.

I just copy your tweet and this is @TeamYouTube answers:
I guess they received thousands of complaints like this every hour and only able respond with generic reply like this

TeamYouTube

@TeamYouTube
·
24m

Replying to
@noroardanto
Thanks for the URL – we recommend asking the creator to check their email for more details and how they can resolve the issue about the copyright strike. Let us know if you mean something else.

 

[CrimsonEminence]

A perspective by an actual simulation sound creator (ACFAN/SHR Modding) with prove, that SDD has stolen work from him.

And this IS actually illegal, not a grey area, not just unwanted, it's inacceptable and right out -> theft.^^