Am I the only one thinking payware could be rFactor2's death knell?

M

Marvin Morgan

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I don't think it's going to be an overnight exodus or anything of the sort but I just feel this payware route will avert customers. One of rFactor2's selling point is the open mod system. One of the open mod system's strength is freeware, product created simply for the love of the game.

Now that we have a couple of payware mods out now it just doesn't feel right. Fortunately the payware that's out now is supposedly countered with mods of the same nature that should/may be freeware. Problem is one is still in beta and the other one is unknown at the moment (DTM mod).

My example is the group I cut my sim racing teeth with is now primarily an iRacing group. I'm not a fan of the game myself and now that we pretty much have all the members on the PC racing now iRacing has took over. I still host Monday night races in rFactor2 and a few people show up but trying to sell them on buying mods for a beta versus them buying iRacing content is probably like trying to turn sand to gold.

So now there are two mods out that have NO shot at being played at my group's site simply because the authors want $$$.

I guess this is more of an open letter for future modders. Thankfully the whole computer world isn't like this. There's plenty of top notched quality programs and utilities made by very talented people who share for all to use. I'm sure glad the U.S. Government didn't charge universities for 'the internet" if so we probably wouldn't be here sharin....uh charging for mods.

I run an rFactor2 and teamspeak server for race nights that's available 24/7. I don't charge my guys for usage for electric bills. I do it for the love of the hobby we all share.
 
Works for iRacing, why not rF2? :) (I mean paying for extra content in general)

If mod will be of good quality, people will throw in a few bucks. If not, it will not earn much to it's authors. This may actually be a motivating factor to produce quality mods.

And there will always be free mods.
 
K Szczech said:
Works for iRacing, why not rF2? :) (I mean paying for extra content in general)

If mod will be of good quality, people will throw in a few bucks. If not, it will not earn much to it's authors. This may actually be a motivating factor to produce quality mods.

And there will always be free mods.
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i racing is licenced they buy there cars 200dollas then sell to the public in there 100s for 11dolla but with no licence you will get jail for maximum of 5 year + a helthy fine more than you would ever make and yes if i want pay i will download iracing but i lasted 5months and never went back always find myself on rf1 again must be the customize control connect for free thing.
 
And some here still have no clue about the concept around pay mods and will never do and many just see $$$ beeing around it.

We are still doing it with love and will allways do but this is not about the money overall but its so we can do more and more. Dont talk about hobby love and so on if you never tryed to do something from scratch to finish freeware and how much time not even talking that for this costs money to! Some modders actually go and buy tools, websites and everything just to get it done here where donations for many modders lacked in the past and i mean here good modding teams that couldnt keep up there servers allready, not even talking about few bucks for the tools they could buy sometimes or upgrade hardware atleast.

Youre opening here thread about something and talking about love to hobby... Well check again, hobby allways costs something and those offering you guys something shouldnt be so closed to open there wallets and support guys that actually offer you alot of fun with there FREEWARE in first place.
Licensed or fictional content, it will all appear to as pay mods, why not? If something is badly done so or so you dont need to buy it actually. If you dont need a car or track, dont buy it. Just becase rf1 had tons of mods it doesnt mean they were all actually good not even talking they were actually what you needed.
 
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Ales Ogrinc said:
And some here still have no clue about the concept around pay mods and will never do and many just see $$$ beeing around it.
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so why would the modder not just sell there work on turbosquid i am not buying any mods generic or copys when i could just download a 3dcar and put it in the game in about 3hours.Previous examples of licenses signed by artists have included a commitment fee of several thousand dollars, a relinquishing of their reproduction rights, and a minimum payment of $2,500 quarterly (8 to 10 % of gross sales) which increases with each new two year contract. An artist who doesn't meet the payment schedule is in danger of losing his entire inventory when his license is revoked. Other artists have recieved numerous threatening letters to cease and desist, all creation, sales, and distribution of their art, whether it be original or limited edition.realy it will cost to much.
 
johnconner said:
so why would the modder not just sell there work on turbosquid i am not buying any mods generic or copys when i could just download a 3dcar and put it in the game in about 3hours.Previous examples of licenses signed by artists have included a commitment fee of several thousand dollars, a relinquishing of their reproduction rights, and a minimum payment of $2,500 quarterly (8 to 10 % of gross sales) which increases with each new two year contract. An artist who doesn't meet the payment schedule is in danger of losing his entire inventory when his license is revoked. Other artists have recieved numerous threatening letters to cease and desist, all creation, sales, and distribution of their art, whether it be original or limited edition.realy it will cost to much.
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Whats the point than going there actually? You clearly dont understand. If we would be for that case than we would do that allready but we dont, its clear that youre calculating how much somebody can make and where to make to.
There are some basic things when you do a mod how to do it if youre going fictinonal tha can still resemble something real cant be real but again this is not youre desicion to make. You as customer have nothing to do with it and what is going behind all doors from mods as free or pay you will to not know exactly.
But again if somebody can license cars or tracks and sell them to and this will happen, why not?
This just opened up now and community is just to spoiled right now with what was in the past and with future bring.
And threads like this are just whining topics for few.
Some are now baging for donations way and so on, well i guess you missed few years of chances about that to support modders overall more and even going to that it will work again only for few as usually all will look away and still do on modders doing free stuff.
 
K Szczech said:
Works for iRacing, why not rF2? :) (I mean paying for extra content in general)

If mod will be of good quality, people will throw in a few bucks. If not, it will not earn much to it's authors. This may actually be a motivating factor to produce quality mods.

And there will always be free mods.
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I could agree with that, but I add the fact a payware modding will need some rules to work imho - avoiding the risk to starts some domino effect...and I hope the modding community starts asap a sort of open discussion about how these rules have to be applied to guarantee both authors and customers, in the respect of everybody rights (and laws).

If each modder/team starts releasing payware mods, without any rule and in a total anarchy, we're still in a borderline situation and some troubles will be potentially around the corner each time a new mod will be sold, so I really hope nobody is going to ruin everything just to get some rushed bucks....:)
 
Tuttle said:
I could agree with that, but I add the fact a payware modding will need some rules to work imho - avoiding the risk to starts some domino effect...and I hope the modding community starts asap a sort of open discussion about how these rules have to be applied to guarantee both authors and customers, in the respect of everybody rights (and laws).

If each modder/team starts releasing payware mods, without any rule and in a total anarchy, we're still in a borderline situation and some troubles will be potentially around the corner each time a new mod will be sold, so I really hope nobody is going to ruin everything just to get some rushed bucks....:)
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This could be done yes and for sure good idea to and sometimes it could sorted out to what some are doing and what others not so we dont get XX same mods again :)
 
I think the iRacing card is not the best one to be played here. Granted I´ve spent a lot of money on their content, but in good faith that I get top notch quality, especially on the physics side of things. I have my doubts that a group of hobbyists are able to exploit the rF2 engine to its fullest and get a well polished result.
For me, ISI are the authority on that front, having access to data, I doubt anyone will get for free from racing teams, car or tire manufacurers. Especially tires are my biggest concern. Thinking of rF1, there are a lot of mods, that exhibit some strange behaviour in that department. For example, when I see tires that are inflated to the maximum pressure and still don´t heat up in the middle of the tread, I know something is wrong.
With the new tire model basically requiring inside knowledge of tire construction and rubber chemistry, I cannot see decent scratch made tires becoming a reality, on a big scale at least, so people will just use tires already available and "tweak" them to fit their vehicle. But if one doesn´t know, what they´re doing, they can screw things up quite easily.
On top of that, I see people lacking basic knowledge of physics, mixing up simple properties like torque and force or mass and force etc., having their go at modding. No offense to anyone, but I wouldn´t trust those with creating a proper physical model of a real car, let alone pay for such content.

That being said, I don´t have a problem with paying for high quality content, but as you can see my standards are pretty high. I would never pay for content up front, meaning, unless I´d get access to it, so I could test it in detail to make an educated decision.

Anyway, that´s just my stance on the matter, I guess it depends on the majority of people. If money was too loose in the pockets, any modding entity would charge for their content. There would be no incentive in striving for better quality than another "rival" outfit´s product.

There could also be another problem. Those very few mods that get everything right, let´s assume some will exist, might not sell as many copies as those that cater more towards the fun faction, that start whining about something being unrealisitic when in actual fact they are just not skilled enough to get into the fun zone with properly modelled physics. We´d just end up with a market full of "Simcade" mods that leaves no place for the true hardcore true to realism mods. The latter take an awful lot of effort, which should really be compensated, but if the majority of a very small community won´t buy it, what´s the point, if one can make more money with less investment?

Just some of the thoughts that regularly cross my mind...

Cheers,
Marcus
 
I am not a customer for pay mods right now because I do believe that ISI has yet a lot to release for RF2. All you have to do is look at the original picture showing the various car silhouettes. But, if some people want to charge for mods, I can't argue with their efforts particularly if others are willing to pay. I choose not to right now particularly since the reception of these mods has been lukewarm to hostile in the community. There are lots of excellent RF mods out there (Historix) as well as mods for GTR2 (P&G3). There is also some promising new sims coming like AC. I believe that ISI has a great sim with RF2. I am waiting to see how much it gets fleshed out before spending more money. Until then, I race RF2, RF, and P&G happily.
 
2€ isn't much, 10€ is... Basically I do not understand why all of sudden some modders say that it is impossible to deliver without payware when it has been possible earlier.

In case of f1ligue... It changed all of sudden: First they said that they will release for free but when all the models were done they changed it to payware. It had nothing to do with the point that they would deliver it faster or better quality if people would pay. F1ligue just thought that if T5 series got some money why won't we also. That is just wrong. I mean f1ligue would have done the mod anyway...it was not the money that made it possible this time.

Payware could be ok if a modder tells right from the beginning that it will be payware, the price is reasonable (preferably under 5€ for a mod), quality should be top notch, and payware would be must to get things done in reasonable time and with good quality.

I also have issues trusting random modding groups homesites as a source to get my mod. I do not play with security of payment.
 
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All I have to say is I won't pay one dime for anything I can't try first. Only took getting two lemons for me to quit iRacing.

And I won't pay for anything with stupid tire skid noises either no matter how good the mod is. Of course, ISI is only ones that create those horrible sounds so I'm safe as they aren't going to charge anytime soon I don't believe.
 
I think it's the wrong way,rfactor 2 will go dead in a short time.
I agree that the development of the tracks and mod takes away a lot of time.
I made two conversion,so I can understand how much work it takes,but I have put my tracks without asking anything.
If everyone who gets content ask for money,in a short time,people leave rfactor 2.
This be the logical consequence.
ISR, I will not publicize this mod on our site,and not even be opening any server.
I do not have anything to do with those who make the mod,just that rfactor has always been free with the mod,and I think it should continue that way.
This being my personal point of view.

Babs
 
Ales Ogrinc said:
And some here still have no clue about the concept around pay mods and will never do and many just see $$$ beeing around it.

We are still doing it with love and will allways do but this is not about the money overall but its so we can do more and more. Dont talk about hobby love and so on if you never tryed to do something from scratch to finish freeware and how much time not even talking that for this costs money to! Some modders actually go and buy tools, websites and everything just to get it done here where donations for many modders lacked in the past and i mean here good modding teams that couldnt keep up there servers allready, not even talking about few bucks for the tools they could buy sometimes or upgrade hardware atleast.
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That statement presumes you know all about me. I was going to give a nice lengthy reply but it's not even worth it. I'll just say you couldn't be MORE wrong.

In any case it's nice to see this topic getting some good discussion. If this is going to be the norm, payware, then it needs to be talked about and not let just run amok like the wild west.
 
Marvin Morgan said:
That statement presumes you know all about me. I was going to give a nice lengthy reply but it's not even worth it. I'll just say you couldn't be MORE wrong.

In any case it's nice to see this topic getting some good discussion. If this is going to be the norm, payware, then it needs to be talked about and not let just run amok like the wild west.
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This was overall, no i dont know you. Dont understand me wrong there but you opened up discussion that is going on for while allready and many are repeated something and judging us and dont even know what we all allready do in past for community and allways people just see $$$ and nothing else.
And yes you are right, it should be talked normal about. Marvin but really nobody can or even will try to understand us about love to modding and how much we want to do and what many wanted allready but life couth them and they allready had to leave.
Ill say it so to, those who will do paymods, will do it but take this as addition, if that is actually only thing you will get than its probably the only one sofar that you can get. As i sayed this is more of plus you will get to the free stuff but probably the amount of work from free stuff will reduce in this new games and yes maybe more will go this way but this will only get the work than that would probably just stay WIP in first place.
 
Ales Ogrinc said:
This was overall, no i dont know you.
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Ok, my bad.

I guess it's because I've been "online" since Genie and services like that. Before there were email addresses as we know them, before HTTP took off and the most graphics you'd see came from some corny ass ASCII splash screen. lol And I was always in some kind of community. The community worked well when info was free to flow and everyone shared without looking for compensation. But it always seem to fall apart when money came into play. After all money is the root of all evil ;)
 
Ales Ogrinc said:
This could be done yes and for sure good idea to and sometimes it could sorted out to what some are doing and what others not so we dont get XX same mods again :)
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You are saying you'r against someone to re-release that same mod as a free? If we are going full Pay mods you will have to compete with what ever is out there on pure quality. Same goes for tracks...
 
boxer said:
You are saying you'r against someone to re-release that same mod as a free? If we are going full Pay mods you will have to compete with what ever is out there on pure quality. Same goes for tracks...
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Nop im not saying this, im saying that sometimes some teams, free or pay mod teams could comunicate bit more so some work is not beeing done twice and i mean that by mod free to mod free team for example. If something is pure quality, well go ahead and do it.
Ofcourse this is not allways the most easy way to do it as from all the years we have seen announcments from A that never released mod X and mod team B didnt even try to do that mod X. It could atleast be tryed sometimes for bit more comunication under some teams.
 
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