Maybe I was a bit misinterpreted. A scratch built mod, I will pay for and have. Having permission and converting the previous work of another person would fall into the donate category. None the less, both methods are completely voluntary on the end users part. In the end, if a modder steals material and sales it, the community generally finds this out and the ill gotten gain fizzles away.
Pumbaaa, I see where you are coming from (as usual) but I still maintain that if we expect people to voluntary, without any compensation, spend many months of work to achieve the quality of content this game needs, then it will wither on the vine and die. Totally free-for-all modding worked in the past when less detail was needed for cars and tracks, but nowadays... I don't see it. There's a reason even most flightsim addons have gone payware, look at DCS Model... same situation there, no one can afford that many hours of spare time , or if they do it takes a year to get something released. pCARS and also ISI have shown that a "renamed" track can be done without legal implications... without owning the license.
pCARS is still at least a year from being released, and if they can't get certain licenses (especially cars) they'll have to scratch the accurate representation and produce something else - at least with cars, hopefully not with tracks. The ISI tracks like Brianza, Northamptonshire, and Nürburg were all public "parks" in their respective locations.
Without licensing I can't support it... If that drives up the price so be it... The safety of the community is more important... All it takes is one law suit and boom we're all driving McLewis's instead of McLaren's and Porka's instead of Porsche's online... pCARS isn't a public game yet so we can't really rely on what they've been able to do just yet... The time needed to get the content in game is one thing, it's a hobby, people spend decades on hobbies without ever earning a cent, it's meant to be a labour of love, and that's where the payware issue divides a lot of people... Some think it'll bring out more quality mods, but without the love of the hobby will the quality really be there? especially if they are struggling to find time or motivation to do it anyway... The extra time and effort it now takes to get rF2 mods into the game in comparison to rF1 will mean that quality mods are further between what they once were, but those who have the love to do it will still do it regardless of time, money or other constraints, and those that choose to share their creations will continue to do so... At the end of the day I bet there's 1000s of rFactor 1 mods that were very very promising or even top quality that never saw the public eye either because they were a league's own mod they didn't want out, something happened in the devs lives that prevented the continuation or the devs just lost interest in the mod... This will continue with rF2 at a slightly higher rate thanks to the extra workload, but due to the promise of the sim there will be new devs to take the place of the old devs as other people get the modding bug...
To Pumbaa666: You never get legal problems if you don't download the track! And so you can sleep peacefully and let others try to do something.
FYI, Better hurry up because if ISI keeps releasing amazing tracks like Loch Drummond general demand will decrease. Sure there will always be people who want a certain track just because they want that track, but on merit alone, Loch Drummond has filled much of what I have been looking for in a track. Laguna is awesome but my enthusiasm for Laguna is probably cut in half or worse with the release of Loch Drummond. However, Laguna is still amazing and will also have staying power online, which is all I do.
Seriously?????????? I don't think one fantasy track will replace the desire to race on the top real race tracks of the world (which Laguna Seca is one) for the other 99.9999999% of us.
Yep. Although as I said, Laguna will have online draw because of what you say which is important so we'll see how it goes...