What about a studio like Codemasters? They're relatively small by industry standards, and pretty much rely on the Formula One licence to stay in business. That "harmless group of die hard fans" creating replicas and making them available for free puts the ninety or so jobs at Codemasters in jeopardy.
Without concrete data to go on, it's a stretch to say that one threatens the other. If the people who download F1 mods for free wouldn't have purchased CM's F1 game anyways, it hardly matters. Otherwise, free content doesnt threaten a priced game since its not taking money out of the License holders pocket.
Let's not mix terms here. Mods =/= piracy. Nothing about the core game was being changed here (from my reading of tankuroded's link), and Codemasters already earned their money with the price of the game. If Codemasters was really concerned about the rampant "piracy" going on by way of these mods, then they should have done what EA is doing with their sports titles, retire online server access to encourage sales of the next title.
And you have the data to support this?
No, "protect" insinuates the potential for something to be damaged. Just because no damage has happened yet, that doesn't mean that the damage cannot or will not happen.
It's simple economics. The modders can create replicas of every single car and circuit and release them online for free. The economics of supply and demand make it clear that when presented with two competing needs, but the resources to satisfy only one, they will choose the one that best satisfies their needs. In this case, we have two competing products of similar or equal quality, with a disparity in price. If enough people opt for the free version over the Codemasters version, eventually it will have an impact on the studio.
Here's where you're wrong. Whatever viewership F1 has taken a dive with on the television side is their own doing (by changing rules like qualifying procedures and then doubling down on it when it fails the first race of the season). However, where they are getting overzealous is that everything that even remotely associates with FIA is somehow copyright protected with a blanket protection and how they are going about "protecting" it is both the wrong approach and it is further damaging the TV product in the process because of reputational damage.
You are still not proving your point. The modder has paid for their copy of the game, and by all rights they should be allowed to modify it any way they choose to do so. I would recommend that you brush up on the legal history behind the court case Nintendo v. Galoob. It was ruled in that case that modifying your legally purchased game by way of cheat codes is similar to introducing "house rules" in Monopoly.
Not true. There is still a price attached to the mods, and that is the cost of the base price of the game that you wish to mod (if it is F1 2013 or 2014, it doesn't matter, it is a fact that you conveniently slip by your memory). Codemasters will still earn money from sales of past games naturally, but even they have to know the nature of the PC market and the fact that old games are supported by way of modifications.
There is a right way to enforce intellectual property, and there is a wrong way to enforce intellectual property. As I have stated in my last post, modification of an old game does not equal piracy of the new game. I'll say this again for the rest of the class, modification of a game brings new gameplay experiences to a tired game. With Codemasters and FIA doing this to the modding community, this will do nothing good in the long run but ENCOURAGE piracy. Why? Because IF they offer nothing to encourage players to upgrade year after year, the modders will go to torrent sites to distribute their work.
And this damage is..?
No. What empowered companies to do the online passes was to combat used game sales (in somewhat large part due to the PS3 having free online play). We just simply voted with our wallets and boycotted companies that did that garbage. Did good games fall through the cracks? Maybe (I for one wanted to play the PS3 Twisted Metal, but it had the online pass).
I think I bought three games total that had passes, two had been out for a long time before I bought them, but the third was DiRT 3, and I wasn't aware it had one when I bought it. I was very pissed.
You need to make it clear if you are talking about them not being entitled to their approach, or if you think their approach is just unwise.
Lucky @Keef isn't big on rights then eh? Considering....
Not really relevant to my point though, and is also a completely different situation.
No on both counts, and the quote really goes to the heart of Codemaster's argument against modifications. This is settled case law in the US since 1991, and the ability to modify one's game is fair use. The whole point to this discussion is that Codemasters is indeed overzealous in protecting their revenue stream that a C&D letter was completely necessary in their view against modification sites. One paid Codemasters for the game, no one is arguing against it, but to equate mods to piracy (because of lost future sales) is just sheer lunacy.
