Wow, that is a shame. I have a copy I won from here a while back that I played for a bit (still need to beat it though). Strange it got removed without notice.
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This is the normal with all Codemasters racing games.
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They shutdown the online servers and removed them from EA Play on October 3rd so I figured it was going to be happening some time this month. It's not really surprising there was no announcement as they didn't announce it on Steam for any of the F1 games either.
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Why is it so hard for game publishers to secure lifetime song rights for a game?
I've never heard of this with movies. If you license a song in a movie you can continue to sell the movie BluRays forever. I've never heard of a movie being pulled from all store shelves over song licensing expiring.
Edit: I thought this was music licensing, but I think it's car licensing. Still, same question. Why is it so hard?
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Some of the auto manufacturers are very fickle when it comes to licensing their products, and it often comes down to real-world factors. A new marketing strategy or CEO can cause an abrupt end to licensing deals. For example, Volkswagen used to be a major player in rally and touring cars, but ended all motorsports involvement when they announced their current focus on going electric. Extending a license for a game featuring the gas-guzzling rally cars that they are distancing themselves from wouldn't fit their "green" brand messaging.
Plus it's not just the manufacturers involved when you are dealing with real-world motorsports. The sanctioning bodies (FIA, ACO, etc), many of the independent race teams, and even some of the tracks are all individual companies that may have their own licensing deals in place. Any one of those asking for more money or refusing to renew a deal could cause a shutdown like this.
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The whole topic is quit complicated to be honest.
Manufacturers also don't want to see their cars misrepresented, crashed, destroyed or associated with murder for example. I don't think volkswagen would really care about going green and hence taking out their association with rally.. I mean they still have Audi and VW going strong in rally and rallycross and these companies are usually proud of their legacy - Audi will always sport their old S1 audis that revolutionized rally with quattro system. Be it gas guzzler or not, we wont probably see that car going away from rally games.
They have to check if devs have made the car accurate, without glitches. Even if airbags are in place where it matters. If a game isn't supported anymore its easier for the manufacturer to say - yeah, we won't keep track of this as well anymore, so stop selling it. Hence no lifelong deals.
Consider also that manufacturer does not control agenda of the video game - in dirt rally we can choose to take any car and easily beat R5 Polo on easy difficulty. That is not PR VW needs, so pay up if you want to use their likeness in a game since they really don't get any benefit out of it (as in they get for example from movies where they can control what happens to the vehicles). Thats why GTA doesn't have real vehicle brands - they are not cheap.. no vehicle brand simply wants to be associated with theft, murder, crashing, hitting people etc.
Forza for example is huge game with huge player base and represents the cars to their true selves for the most part. Manufacturer would even pay to be featured as a key vehicle for the story or to be portrayed on the cover of the game. Since we have Polo as cover car for Dirt Rally I am pretty sure they have a rather good deal with them where codemasters might even have the upper hand in the deal. Hyundai though - their test year in WRC was riddled with problems and all they want would be their technical issues, earlier designs to not be found around so easily. My guess would be that such smaller players most likely have some rules on their side in case they don't want to ruin their image - so a lifelong license to be portrayed in a game for years to come as the losing company is not beneficial to getting real world support.
PS. and while I hate that I have to say this - separating in DLCs as they did for DR 2.0 might solve the issue when future comes. If the support ends for some classic car or Hyundai R5 , they could just delist the DLC most likely and leave the game up until they simply decide to end support on their side.
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It's not the same, those physical copies have already been produced, however they are not allowed to produce any more from that point, even if they are still in stores, and with the digital stores once they lose the license to produce anymore, you can only buy the steam keys that are sold on key selling websites that still have keys that were "produced" already for the game, since they're not allowed to "produce" new keys anymore past that certain date.
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You just reminded me of Malcolm in the Middle
https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/78qbz7/to_this_day_it_makes_absolutely_no_sense_how/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hulu/comments/b2sbz9/has_the_soundtrack_to_malcolm_in_the_middle_been/
and The Wonder Years (it's been finally released, I think)
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/7145231/shows-not-on-dvd-music-rights-wonder-years-wkrp
https://www.techdirt.com/2009/01/21/the-wonder-years-unavailable-on-dvd-due-to-music-licensing-rights/
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Codemasters still have not respected what they did and let EA handle it, what the freaking is this?
But lucky I'm still have this game on my library
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Wow, that was such a DIRT move on their part, I think we should all RALLY and do something about it!
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Similar, their license expired on those too. However they let the people know in advance, but didn't really do a sale on it before they took it off, so it was a little crappy. It's a bandai game, and they do that a lot I heard, it was the same with Jump force as well, lost rights to the characters I think, so they announced ahead they'll take it off.
I think some nfs games also license or licensed music temporarily which eventually lead to their shutdown. Maybe I'm wrong, I feel like I read that somewhere.
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It never returns anymore
EA ruined it, even you can tell them that bringing it back that's impossible!
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They should've make a big last discount or just give it away for free like Dirt 3, Dirt Rally, GRID 1 and 2.
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They probably would have, but since they're an EA company now that ain't gonna happen.
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Dirt Rally was codemasters last great game on steam. It was the best sim rally game currently available. Its sad to see this game go without a warning a sale or Giveaway so people wouldnt miss out.
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While I agree Dirt Rally was great, it did have problems. And Dirt Rally 2.0 really did improve a lot.
So while I have good memories of first game as well, I don't think that ignoring 2.0 gives any justice to the franchise. I hate codemasters for many different reasons myself, but 2.0 is ways better and I don't doubt 3.0 is in the works and will top 2.0 easily.
Also it's not like it wasn't given away for a million times for free on Steam and Humble.. Of course a warning and last minute giveaway would have been appreciated, but I just I don't see this as that big of a deal TBH.
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