The issue is that we don’t actually have that kind of “freedom.” If Kunos wanted to, they could assemble a team of lawyers, work directly with car manufacturers, and potentially shut down the entire modding ecosystem in a single day if they had the time, resources, and money.
The same goes for companies like Microsoft, Turn 10, Sony, or Polyphony. If they truly wanted to, they could issue DMCA strikes comparable to those seen in the music industry and shut down every modding site and rehosting site by the end of the month. But they don’t seem particularly interested in doing that.
Yes, I may be somewhat hypocritical when I say that going after modders who encrypt their work is wrong while also believing that encryption itself shouldn’t exist in the first place. I also agree that profiting from assets belonging to multi-million-dollar companies is questionable. At the same time, we need to consider what actually constitutes original work.
If a mod only uses 3D assets from another game but includes scratch-made textures, sound assets, or physics data built from real-world references, then that should be taken into account.
There are also creators who use existing models as a base and build on top of them. For example, several mods are based on GT7 models, but the rest of the car is heavily reworked.
Creators like Kyusai stopped making scratch-made body kits for AC because people kept decrypting and stealing their work, then reselling it even though the body kits were built using Gran Turismo proportions, which are among the closest available to 1:1 references.
There was also the MMW group, who ported GT7 models at extremely high triangle counts. Some of their mods were heavily reworked; for example, the LFA interior made by Allies had the entire interior rebuilt because the ripped GT7 model was essentially unusable. They added substantial new work, only for people to immediately steal, decrypt, and resell it on Telegram and elsewhere.
Personally, I think that if someone adds significant scratch-made content to a 3D model, they should have the right to encrypt it if they want. But if it’s just a 1:1 rip and port that reuses 100% of the original assets from games like Gran Turismo or Forza without meaningful modification, then that’s a different case. It’s also been very clear for several months that many people don’t care whether a model is encrypted or not especially ACTK, who has already targeted creators like
@ItsHords for no valid reason and just stolen their work for no reason.
These groups are going after scratch-made content creators while not releasing their own work publicly because they know sites like RSS, VRC, URD, and IER could potentially take legal action against them. I doubt we will ever find a perfect middle ground in the encryption debate. But given the current direction, it’s hard to see creators who make scratch-made content continuing to release work publicly much longer. The risk of theft and resale is simply too high.
TLDR: Encryption bad, But also good. xd
