Formula One modding takes a turn for the worse

Formula One World Championship Limited, the rights and licensing arm of the Formula One auto-racing organization, has put the brakes on user-made mods for a number of F1 games. Pretend Race Cars notes that over 30 pages of mods have been removed from the sim racing community site RaceDepartment for the games Automobilista, F1 2013 and F1 2014. Even relatively minor mods like one that returned real-life Martini Racing logos and colors to the games have been removed. Since mods for the current officially licensed game F1 2015 from Codemasters remain untouched, the speculation is that Formula One is pushing the latest licensed product by forcing modders and the community to abandon older titles.

This is not the first time that Formula One has issued demands against sim modders working on older games. In 2014, the organization forced VirtualIR to remove mods for their licensed games.

UPDATE: Automobilista has been de-listed from Steam due to a copyright infringement complaint. The developer’s notice doesn’t confirm if the complaint is related to the F1 modding issue, but they note that until the legal issue is sorted out, they cannot discuss the specifics.