I 'THINK' the BTCC liveries were done by one or two guys from RD, I would hope they could recreate their work ASAP if the liveries are pulled.
Good, MSG is the worst game developer ever and it's far better for us when the licenses are with other, and far better, developers. You know, the ones that actually produce good games that arrive on time.
Simply save the rcfmp files and you are fine. People are a bit dramatic and acting as if this was Raceroom or iRacing where you can't use 3rd party content. The only interesting thing I would like to know is if I still need to buy the remaining BTCC cars that I don't own to be safe to be use them in the future. It's two cars for me, so not really a big deal. @SharD You mean games, that nobody cared to produce for the last twenty years? What makes you so certain that any of the other studios will snatch up the lisence to produce a dedicated game? If I was MSG I would have dropped those lisences much earlier. There simply is no viable market for a BTCC game. Who is gonna buy it besides some Brits and a few die hard Motorsport fans from elsewhere? If you take a look at Raceroom that actually features a global Touring Car series you might have noticed that nobody really cares for touring car racing despite some people on a national or local level. In Germany - a country that stands for car manufacturing - very few people know that TCR Germany even exists. And DTM is just another GT3 series.
The BTCC licence deal was signed in May 2020 and expires 31st December 2026. When this was first planned I'd imagine that MSG was looking at getting a game released by the end of 2022 at the latest. That would have given them four years with the expectation that it could be extended if all went well. However today they would be looking at perhaps just two years to get to the point they could extend the licence. Would that be practicable? However... I am surprised by the way the BARC (TOCA) news article is worded TBH. The way it reads BARC (TOCA) have unilaterally decided to exercise their right to extract themselves from the deal due to breach of contract by MSG and not a joint statement to terminate the deal. The collapse of the NASCAR deal was a solution negotiated with all parties.
MSG has a history of screwing up. Nascar 21 Ignition is one of the worst racing games ever released, and after that they were incapable of producing another nascar game. They bought all these licenses, but I am not sure if they were even planning to release a game based on these licenses at all. It's not just the BTCC game. They also had Nascar and Indycar. At least the Nascar license has been picked up by iRacing (formerly Papyrus, of NR2003 fame). Studio 397 should do all it can to get rid of MSG, or it'll take this game down in its fall.
Because it didn't happen / hasn't happened? That really doesn't make sense logically - you're assigning intent based on outcome. Why would someone pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for licenses with no intention to use them? That's a rhetorical question. I'm not interested in any theories...
As I have opined before, I'm guessing that MSG got all these sims planned and contracts sorted but didn't have any way of being able to produce them at that time. That left them looking to buy a studio that could do the job... hello and welcome Studio 397 Sold vapourware to the race series owners and then found they were in trouble.
I'd be surprised if the indycar game sees light of day, according to LinkedIn the redundancies last week hit that and the KartKraft Devs.
You are completely missing the point. The official lisences for Indycar games and BTCC games were available to ALL publishers/studios for the last twenty years. iRacing could have developed an Indycar game if they really wanted to. But they didn't care due to their big love for their customers so Indycar went elsewhere and opted for the highest offering party. But the actually fun part comes now: iRacing bought Monster Games - the former producer of the Nascar Heat games - to develop a console Nascar game. Been there, seen that before. How that affects anyone of us in a positive way is far beyond me because the sim racing audience is playing on PC for the most part. They aren't doing us any favors. How anyone expects a successor to NR2003 with that prospect makes me wonder if people use their brains at all. And people telling everyone how "well recieved" their new games are, are - excuse me - complete idiots. Would you call a game with 1 player (yep - you read that right) on average well recieved? Now put that into perspective and think once again about what you wrote in response to my comment. I am sorry to disappoint you but we are back to status quo of five years ago when it comes to Nascar sim racing on PC. And while MSG was a "tad" overambitious it atleast gave people the chance to experience BTCC content and Indycar content with the right amount of polish in the sim segment outside of iRacing. I know that iRacing and their die-hard userbase don't like any sign of competion - no pun intended - but people who really expect the situation to be better now are living in a different world. The other potential option for BTCC content right now is the studio led by (I)an Bell, a company that hired a "game designer" like Austin who has no idea at all about game design. Good luck and happy sim racing.
Eh, revisionist history here. iRacing were never in the game of producing single-brand racing games, aligned with one series. Even NASCAR is under the umbrella of the overall service. They also never showed any intent whatsoever to try to create a NASCAR 2003 updated, that wasn't simply part of their subscription online racing system. No standalone game, in the old style. And there are people who will just never accept their subscription model, and sorry to them, but they'll never change it. What has now changed, is when iRacing bought Monster Games, the old Heat developer, who were doing a console dirt game. This was able to leverage the WoO licenses, to produce a standalone console game (and also one for SRX, where the reverse is now takign place - its coming to the core iRacing service). Without that Monster Games acquisition, iRacing themselves would have never made a non-subscription, single brand, non-PC-only game. Both IndyCar and BTCC are now facing one of three options: first, go with a developer who allows multiple brands/series on their platform, like iRacing, Reiza, Raceroom PC game; second, wait for iRacing to finish the NASCAR game, so they can get "in the queue" for a single-brand/console game; or third and even less likely, aim to get included as a series option to Forza/Gran Turismo and be locked into a single console. BTCC show no signs of abandoning the single brand push (because otherwise they'd have left the rF2 option running, and waited in line for an LMU-style title). IndyCar might capitulate in order to get something, and simply allowing Reiza to release their already-developed car doesn't move them any further forward than what they already had with the disgruntled iRacing punters. iRacing, in fact, now hold the cards for any of the two main options. I would also note as a sidebar, iRacing already announced they will be producing additional UK tracks...
Revisionistic history ... may I remind you that I am just reflecting upon the comments above that claim that we are in a better place now because MSG is giving up some lisences that they to some extend got due to other studios having zero interest to do anything with them. That's not something that I am making up but straight facts. How else would you explain that most of those lisences appeared in games around 20 years ago? Reiza seemed interested to do something with the historic CART content but it's the same as with everything else. It's completely all over the place with the studio not finishing anything properly and moving to endurance content in a sim that has a catastrophic multiplayer system and abysmal replay and broadcasting options. We can twist and turn it as we like, what I do know for sure is that we will neither get a fully fledged Indycar experience, BTCC experience nor Nascar experience in the coming years in the sim segment with all studios doing some of it but noone getting it right. iRacing buying Monster games has zero effect on this because their track record isn't anything to write home about either. Who ever get's his hopes up might need a reality check. Anyway, we will chat again in 2025 when thousends of desperate oval racing fans are playing NASCAR 2025. Checking the current player numbers of NASCAR HEAT 5, SRX and the Tony Steward game it'll be a long journey - or maybe not
How must I know? They bought all these licenses while their first game (N21I) was a massive failure. Overambitious? Maybe. Utterly stupid? Yes. To me it looks like bad business practices. The truth is that they cocked up massively and they left millions of fans in the dirt. And, no, the Indycar game most likely isn't coming either;
The horrible thing is many of us saw this happening from the very beginning, I take zero pride in that personally, I wanted nothing more than a decent fresh new BTCC game and I was very hyped for it but that nagging voice in the back of my head saying "this is gonna go horribly wrong" never went away. The Indycar game was gonna be a nice bonus alongside LMU (which I'm very much looking forward too), at the end of the day it sucks for the guys & gals to lose their jobs first and foremost above anything, secondly it's us the users that have lost out due to the blatant incompetence and greed shown by MSG in the first place thinking they could buy & own everything in their power. Fingers are so firmly crossed for S397 and the rest of the decent staff at MSG, I just hope there's no more bad news to come.
Exactly. I'm not sure if it is brutal incompetence, arrogance and greed, or the idea that gamers gobble up everything that is thrown at them anyway, even if it is a really awful product. It's true that BTCC and Indycar are pretty niche, but they still have a fanbase that looked forward to these games, including myself. We may have to wait until 2025 for a new Nascar game, too. This company doesn't deserve to be defended.
