Automobilista Subject to Copyright Claim

[Paul Jeffrey]

Reiza Studios' newest title Automobilista has been temporary removed from the Steam digital distribution platform due to a copyright infringement claim. The title was removed from the Steam storefront Tuesday night.

Reiza Studios made the following statement to their fans and customers today:

"The Steam store page for Automobilista has been taken down due to a copyright infringement claim which had been submitted to Valve.

As is known, Automobilista packages a variety of officially licensed cars & brands alongside fictionalized, originally created content. The claim in question does not make any specific reference to content present in Automobilista supposedly in infringement of the party´s copyright - until it does, our belief is that it has no merit.

We have already taken the appropriate measures to resolve the issue ASAP, but in accordance to Valve´s policy, the process may take a few days to be completed.

In the meantime time we will continue to progress with the development of Automobilista, and intend to release another Early Access update shortly. The game is available for purchase as part of our Membership packages from our forum store.

Please understand that until the matter is fully resolved, we may not be able to discuss it."​

If you previously purchased and installed Automobilista through Steam, you will still be able to play the current Early Access build 0.8.7r both off- and online.

Dont forget to check out the RaceDepartment Automobilista forum for discussion and news on the Reiza title. Why not have a go in one of our daily Club Races run across a number of tracks and cars with large grids and close racing.

Update April 5th: Renato Simioni made a statement that can be seen here

 

[Brandon Wright]

Just do like i did from last year onwards, stop watching F1 entirely and focus on other forms of motorsport without ridiculous rules and which still respect their fans.
It's the only way the series and the vultures that own it will seize to exist in its current form, as no more fans = no more money.

Never!! F1 is the greatest soap opera on Earth and this is just another chapter. Sure, the racing is rubbish and it's run by people who have more money than is good for them, but the drama is second to none!

The second best soap opera is watching sim racers turn mountains into molehills and then arguing endlessly about who's mountain is the most realistic, or writing fictional blog stories about the "THE SENSELESS ATTACK ON MOLES AND THEIR HILLS!!".

 

[M D Gourley]

I'm sure it will get sorted out...and it has not dampened my enthusiasm for AMS as I personally enjoy it immensely...it just feels good to drive.

 

[Hash_V8]

The way this has happened to one of the smaller known sims, the fact only AMS mods was hit, suggests to me someone within the "sim race community" has somehow spotlighted this to FOM,Ive seen plenty of twisted sick ppl comment on AMS with pure hate dripping from their keyboard,I would not put it beyond them to google FOM and emailing them, IMO we have a snake in the grass among us,A nark.

 

[mister dog]

Never!! F1 is the greatest soap opera on Earth and this is just another chapter. Sure, the racing is rubbish and it's run by people who have more money than is good for them, but the drama is second to none!

The second best soap opera is watching sim racers turn mountains into molehills and then arguing endlessly about who's mountain is the most realistic, or writing fictional blog stories about the "THE SENSELESS ATTACK ON MOLES AND THEIR HILLS!!".

My ex gf used to watch 'days of our lives', maybe you could check it out as an alternative
It has John Black. F1 doesn't have John:

 

[Brandon Wright]

The way this has happened to one of the smaller known sims, the fact only AMS mods was hit, suggests to me someone within the "sim race community" has somehow spotlighted this to FOM,Ive seen plenty of twisted sick ppl comment on AMS with pure hate dripping from their keyboard,I would not put it beyond them to google FOM and emailing them, IMO we have a snake in the grass among us,A nark.

Or it could just be that Reiza is the only Dev who makes their fictional race cars with liveries that are very similar to the real ones and with team names that not-so-subtly tell you which real-world team it's based on. The fact that AMS is new and popular at the moment probably caused it to get on FOM's radar, pretty sure they have lots of spiders trawling the interwebs for these kinds of things.

Or it could be some big conspiracy to "screw the fans", but I'm wearing my tinfoil hat so I should be safe.

My ex gf used to watch 'days of our lives', maybe you could check it out as an alternative

I've seen it, it's second-rate compared to the F1 Circus!

 

[jo_siffert]

@Austin Ogonoski

Please explain how we "took other peoples money to build a car that violated copyright laws".

If you can´t do that in specific legal detail, you are once again sailing libelous waters. You really need to start being more careful with that. Your hobby of producing damaging factoids can have actual consequences, and not just for the companies / people you target.

I think that it should be possible to respond to a Dev in a polite way - when he is responding in that way...

In my opinion it is ok to be pointing out the negative things to the Devs - everyone can learn about faults and I think that the Guys are old enough to handle this sort of things.

But only pointing and pointing and pointing the negative things is not the way you can actually motivate someone (maybe it is a thing you learn with the age - growing up and living your life) - sometime it is better to motivate the people around you, than to trying to destroy the people around you (which where developing the tools to give you a nice evening to race...)

Maybe you are a good racer, and a fast racer, and maybe you are an alien - but that does not qualify you to be the right person to judge over everything that you think you can.

Try to see your cup of tea half filled, then half emptied through your life....

PS: Your credibility could raise by deleting some really silly comments on your blog - by not cleaning some of that stuff you are disqualifiying yourself (for over a year i think) as best as you can.

Greets
Jo

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

The way this has happened to one of the smaller known sims, the fact only AMS mods was hit, suggests to me someone within the "sim race community" has somehow spotlighted this to FOM,Ive seen plenty of twisted sick ppl comment on AMS with pure hate dripping from their keyboard,I would not put it beyond them to google FOM and emailing them, IMO we have a snake in the grass among us,A nark.

Not only AMS mods.

 

[P*Funk]

Or it could just be that Reiza is the only Dev who makes their fictional race cars with liveries that are very similar to the real ones and with team names that not-so-subtly tell you which real-world team it's based on.

Which I'm sure isn't IP infringement either. But lets be honest. IP is whatever the guy with the deepest pockets says it is these days.

These laws are truly effed.

 

[Qazdar Karim]

Time to start boycotting F1 races

 

[Austin Ogonoski]

Formula One owns the copyright to the logo and immediate branding of Grand Prix events. Formula One Group is a collection of smaller companies which control the rights, management, and licensing operations of the Formula One World Championship and all entities inside of it. Sponsors, in some instances, trademark certain color combinations or patterns. For example, Gulf Oil's aqua & orange. Together, this is all part of the Formula One package.

What I assume Reiza has gotten in trouble for, in the eyes of FOM anyways, is the likeness of their cars. We can play stupid all we want, everybody knows what they're doing - including Formula One. Sure, wing portions and other minor aero bits have received slight design changes, but come on now, let's not kid ourselves here:

Now in terms of the Formula V10 crowdfunding thing I made a comment about earlier that both Renato and Jo wanted me to answer, take a look at this:

To any average Formula One fan who doesn't care for minor aero bits to be modeled exactly as they are on the real car, this is a 2002 Sauber C21 with the decals removed. It even features the green element that Petronas had once trademarked as a part of their logo. Now had this been a leopard print car, or a white car with RaceDepartment logos everywhere, FOM wouldn't be able to do anything because Reiza could indeed claim it's just a generic open wheel car inspired by grand prix racing of that era. But when it's this obvious, you're dipping into the "likeness" aspect of copyright laws, and you're not gonna win.

Whether F1 is mad about the V10 in particular, that's something only Reiza and I guess RD know for sure - because they certainly won't be telling us. Unfortunately, from a purely legal perspective, this is incredibly sketchy, and it won't be good if F1 finds out a crowdfunding campaign helped bring this car to life. And then if that road is explored, what to do with the resulting mess.

I think it's poopy that the hammer has come down this hard, but in hindsight, a lot of precautions simply weren't taken that should have been.

 

[PATR10T]

Time to start boycotting F1 races

doin it since years... nothing has changed but getting more stupid year by year and it looks like now its on his highest point with it...

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

EDIT: I cant be bothered

 

[PATR10T]

looks like when noone visits his blog he has to come to the people and visit them?

 

[Deleted member 130869]

More reason to ignore the cars from the past nine years. Group C and turbo 80s F1, with their learning curves and all, are where it's at. Screw FOM too.

 

[Austin Ogonoski]

looks like when noone visits his blog he has to come to the people and visit them?

Is that all you've got? Can't actually sit and talk about the issue at hand, so might as well just insult the guy?

This supposed "non-story" on a blog that "nobody is visiting" has been linked on: PC Gamer, Polygon, Ars Technica

And pretty much every relevant Subreddit. Meanwhile, posts are getting censored and a bunch of leftist manchildren are throwing hissy fits because you just can't have the guy from PRC be right, can you?

 

[duko]

This guy has a mental problem, at first it was annoying spamming all forums from all the developers with all his nonsens, but now is just plain stupid. Someone ban him already.

 

[P*Funk]

@Austin Ogonoski You shouldn't be proud of that. It just reinforces the fact that your fact checking is as poor as the real gaming sites' is.

Guessing the connection doesn't make the fact that most of your articles are full of assumptions and outright incorrect details go away. Now that you got major gaming services repeating your article it means that the mistruth's you propagate through your laziness gets repeated and could in fact end up harming people.

For instance, Reiza didn't make a 2016 McLaren which you insisted based entirely on your feels. If you were even remotely aware its a 2014 spec car literally made to be a generic designed after no particular car. You would have known as much just by reading the press release when Reiza announced the car. Updating liveries doesn't change the performance spec or the fact that the car itself is not a likeness except in terms of the regs which anyone can use. Its only admittance to the series thats protected in that respect. Its entirely separate from the livery argument but you seem to try to lump all your stuff together as if one right answer blanks out 2 or 3 wrong ones.

So why don't you just get some humility and acknowledge that you're as wrong as you're right and when it comes to being reblogged as legit news that's bloody atrocious. This reminds me of how mainstream news like the Daily Mail consistently misrepresents scientific papers for click bait entirely because the jackasses posting it don't know how to nor care to read the source materials correctly.

 

[Austin Ogonoski]

This guy has a mental problem, at first it was annoying spamming all forums from all the developers with all his nonsens, but now is just plain stupid. Someone ban him already.

Some dude claimed nobody visits PRC.

I provided evidence to the contrary. Here's some more.

This constitutes as a mental problem?

 

[P*Funk]

Hey look, he's posting his viewership figures. Pretty much reinforces his priorities doesn't it.

 

[Austin Ogonoski]

@Austin OgonoskiSnipped for length.

Please tell me how writing "almost 80 high quality community mods, some of which included multiple cars for entire season compilation packs, were removed from RD" instead of "30 pages of mods were removed from RD" would have changed anything in the eyes of normies from places like PC Gamer or Ars Technica. Please tell me how this somehow makes FOM showing up and making a mess of the sim community's modding scene significantly less severe.