Yeah, I get your view, but don't you think that anyone got any joy from your release? And that it really didn't encourage any groups to expand their grids? Why focus on just the negative and slowly kill the scene instead of focus on the positive side and keep the scene alive?
I do think about the people who actually enjoyed our release, and they’re the reason I still want to finish our 993 car and release it publicly. If ACTK ends up decrypting it, as he probably will, I honestly couldn’t care less at that point.
The only real annoyance is that it means I’ll have to check various 3D model sites once a week to see if our work is being sold somewhere. It’s not a huge amount of effort, but it does eat into the little free time I have each week when I’m not busy with work or real-life commitments. Unfortunately, negative experiences tend to have a bigger impact than positive ones. I’d honestly have a much more positive view of ACTK if he simply didn’t share the decrypted versions publicly. If he actually wanted to help, he could just send us the “fixes” he claims to make so we could implement them properly into the mod ourselves.
But that doesn’t seem to be his intention. Instead, he mocks people about it on Discord or bans anyone who asks him to take down the content he’s sharing for profit.
If it weren’t for the abhorrent personality he constantly showcases online, I might view him in a more positive light. But every interaction I’ve had with him has been vile, hateful, and completely negative. Personally, I don’t think he’s good for the community, at least not right now, especially when he’s decrypting work that has been made from scratch.
It is incredibly annoying, but there's not really much that can be done about it. It's a real shame that Ilja gave the encryption tool to anyone who asked for it rather than just encrypting scratch-built content at the request of the modder, of which there is so little he could probably have done it himself and kept the tool itself private and under control. What actually happened instead was that the mod scene got flooded with low-quality encrypted rips, often with hard-locked basic mistakes that frustrated users and incentivised people to try and break the encryption, if only to fix the mod and make it more useable. If only high-quality scratch-built 'passion projects' were encrypted then nobody probably would have been bothered trying to crack them, as there would have been little point. I don't think anyone anticipated how encryption could be abused and used as a tool to flex shoddy mods, buts that's where we are today, and as usual, the good modders suffer.
Yeah, I think Ilja shares some of the responsibility for the push toward decryption as well. In my opinion, encrypting 3D models that are straight ports from other games isn’t something I can really support unless they’ve been properly modified beyond just fixing holes or basic cleanup. That said, there are plenty of mods built on top of models from games like Forza, Gran Turismo, Project Cars, and others where encryption makes sense. Some of those mods have been heavily edited, fixed, and expanded with additional assets that the creator may have actually purchased.
There are also several mods on ACTK’s site that include parts which were originally paid assets. Yes, the base model might come from Gran Turismo, but the same model can also include scratch-made parts created by other 3D artists who specifically ask modders to encrypt their work so those assets don’t end up being resold by others. I think a lot of people forget that part of the equation. Just because someone is using a base model from Forza or Gran Turismo doesn’t necessarily mean they
want to encrypt it. Often it’s because they’ve purchased additional 3D assets like body kits, exhausts, roll cages, gauges, and other components to improve the mod and avoid it being just another basic port.
In many cases, the creators of those assets require the modder to either keep the mod private or encrypt it before sharing it publicly, specifically to prevent their work from being stolen or redistributed.
I currently have several mods that will likely never be released publicly and will only ever be shown in images, mainly because they include 3D assets from other creators that I purchased. Technically, I
could share them, but I would have to encrypt the models first. Even though the base cars are largely direct ports from Forza or Gran Turismo, the paid assets I’ve added to them require that level of protection. Ideally, this wouldn’t be necessary. But when you buy assets from 3D artists, many of them specifically request that any public release using their work be encrypted. Otherwise, they ask that the project remain private.
So if I ever wanted to release those mods publicly, encryption wouldn’t really be a choice, it would be a requirement from the asset creators themselves.
