User blog:ShinnyShin/Porsche! What are you doin?! Porsche!! STAHP

My fellow racers

It's been a while since I last graced you all with a blog! This time it's not a rant (per se) but an observation on what seems to be happening to the world of racing games now that after 15 years or so, EA's exclusivity deal with Porsche has finally come to an end, meaning that many other developers are now able to feature these cars in their games.

But at what cost?

First, a bit of background for you guys. Porsche is a German automobile manufacturer that produces high-end sports cars, sedans and SUVs. Until early to mid-2017 they were in an exclusive contract with game developer EA that only allowed Porsche vehicles to be present in EA-only titles such as Need for Speed and Real Racing.

Other German car-makers like RUF and 9FF derive their vehicles from incomplete Porsche frames and engineer them so much that under German law, they are considered entirely different cars. In addition to installing home-made parts and having cerified serial/production numbers, RUF is officially recognized by the German and US governments as a legit manufacturer.

Rinspeed, a Swiss car-maker, modifies and restores cars such as those made by Porsche and Subaru. They also create their own concept cars which never go into production.

For years, EA's stranglehold on the Porsche license has meant that a lot of competitor games have had to resort to using these other car brands as stand-ins for Porsche. Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, released in 2000, marked the beginning of the decade-and-a-half-long chokehold over said license.

If anything, EA's monopoly over Porsche has enabled these rivals to flourish in other racing game titles and depending on who you ask, some will argue that RUF is better at being Porsche than, well, Porsche. Gran Turismo 2 is widely believed to have made RUF one of the most recognized brands in the sim-racing community.

And since this topic concerns the sim-racing world, RUF, 9FF and Rinspeed have managed to reach millions of gamers through a huge selection of games, unlike Porsche, which has ultimately limited itself in that scope.

Some of you may have noticed the reduced appearance, or even disappearance of the Porsche-based lookalikes in not only the Asphalt series but in a few other games, which follows the recent inclusion of said Porsches.

Titles like Forza, Gran Turismo, and Project CARS to name a few. Some of these games only got Porsche thrown in as DLC and started omitting RUF and co. from their line-ups.

Forza itself used to have Porsches in a deal with Microsoft and Turn 10 in conjuction with EA,  until the release of Forza 4 where collaborations fell apart and at least 35 Porsches were removed from the final version of the game.

Assetto Corsa may still hold out some hope of keeping Porsche and RUF together for the forseeable future, it seems. Conversely, EA's Need for Speed series has never featured RUF, 9FF or Rinspeed in any of its releases.

Now a few weeks ago, Gameloft gave away these cars in several week-long events for free, and for now it seems that if you never got the chance to get them then, you probably might not get another shot. They're not even available as Blueprint Cars either.

It's almost as if Gameloft is saying, "Please, forget these cars ever existed. If you already own them, then fair enough, not much we can do about that. But if you're new to this game, we never had any of these cars in the first place." Porsche is now your only choice!

Some of these player favorites like the 9FF GT9 Vmax and RUF models have been there since the earliest versions of Asphalt 8 for instance, and the Rinspeed came around much later. But now, all of these cars are essentially worthless. And on top of that, they're no longer available for purchase. Even the aforementioned Vmax, which would have taken a few years to save up enough Tokens for (speaking from experience here), was given away for free!

@McLarenP1 Boy was very kind to share this article about how developers are responding to the terms that come with the inclusion of Porsche in their games. One of the company's reps stated that he didn't count on names like RUF becoming so popular as proxies for Porsche!

Which brings up these burning questions : - is Porsche eliminating all its rivals from the world of racing games? - are developers being forced to pick one or the others? - will we ever see ANY future games that include ALL these makes at some point?

Some further reading for you all :

http://jalopnik.com/5834368/porsche-doesnt-care-about-video-game-people

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/02/09/ea-we-need-to-talk-about-porsche

What are your views on this, fellow racers?