A Solution For iRacing
(Or How To Make Friends)
It's Simple
Open the source. Give us the code. The old code not your new stuff. What have you got to lose? Will it keep people from using your sim? Not if it's as good as you claim. Maybe some who don't agree with a pay-to-play. But people will always move on to something that's better when it comes along. But look at it like this: you're not giving up your new code and you have the right to use anything that's produced by the community as you see fit. Someone may actually give you something that will enable you to reach a level that you didn't see as possible. Two brains are better than one sometimes.
A Bonus
You don't have Nascar and what are the chances of getting it when EA's contract finally expires? We have Nascar. We have tracks and cars and will always have tracks and cars and we will always have people revising and improving tracks and cars. Give us a way to add these items to your game at such time as it is prudent. It's just like the old baseball sims that I used to play. The game company couldn't use the player names in the sim but they could provide alternate names that used actual statistics. And simmers would create lists or programs with the correct names and publish them. Presto, you have everything you need for realistic gameplay and you don't need the blessings of a corporate greed-monger or pricey licenses.
It's Like This, See?
We had NR2K3 and the Nascar track set--the best sim game and the most familiar icon of American racing. And of course people wanted more. Papyrus provided some add-on tracks. They also provided tools for people who wanted to create new tracks and paint updated cars. Instead of fading, it's actually getting better. Tracks are still getting better. The car paint jobs are stunning. And the variety of car models and series? Well you've seen enough to know what's possible and even feel threatened
Why NR3K3 Won't Die Easy
One thing that keeps NR2K3 popular is the admission of Nascar drivers that they have played the game and actually used it to familiarize themselves with tracks they hadn't driven. Plus it gave the sim community something in common with some of the star drivers. It's one reason that NR2K3 still commands a high price when you try to land a copy these days. A new generation of sim drivers wants to join the crowd that actually raced Dale Jr. and Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex and others.
Let Us Help
What are we getting out of this besides satisfaction? It's never been a monetary thing for the community. Even the mods you took issue with weren't being sold. The hackers(sic) were providing a service that was popular and wanted. If you had worked with them at that time and maybe released some code it may have prevented people from publishing full executables that didn't require ownership of the original game. I'll be honest--if someone had given me some disassembled source I would have gotten into programming again myself. There are signs of age in NR2K3, areas in the code where I'd love to dig around and try to improve. Racing back to the yellow for one...
What If We Promise Not To Be Greedy?
We don't even need all the code. Break it up if you want. Give us a way to call some external modules or just give us selected sections of code. We really don't want to keep you from your profits and upset your shareholders. We'd like to be on your side, we really would. But so far you haven't showed any hint of benevolence or good will. The name change to iRacing hints that maybe you need to distance yourselves from a PR nightmare. Maybe you need to distance yourself from some of the lawsuits and negativity surrounding them. A friend once told me "Be a social asshole and not just a regular asshole". There's a lot of truth in that. Let's all be friends. I'm sure you'd rather be known as the successor to NR2K3 and not as the company who turned their back on all of those people who gladly purchased their original work.