This image is from Codemasters' F1 2015, which is has the official license for the sport. Alter this game at your peril! (credit: Codemasters)
There's a bit of a fuss going on in the sim racing community right now. A website called RaceDeparment—which serves as a hub for many a sim racing game—took down many pages of content containing mods for a pair of Codemasters Formula 1 games as well as Reiza Studio’s Automobilista following a cease and desist from the sport's commercial rights holder.
RaceDepartment was hosting mods for F1 2013, F1 2014, and Automobilista that let players update their games so that the cars look like this year's machines (rather than several years out of date). But those mods were unlicensed by Formula One World Championships Ltd, which owns the commercial rights to all things F1 (including TV broadcasts, online videos, and video games). That's riled a few people up, if this hyperbolic (and sometimes-profane) rant at Pretend Race Cars is anything to go by.
However one feels about unlicensed game mods, it ought not to be too surprising that the content has been removed. For one thing, RaceDepartment's terms of service unambiguously state that copyright- and trademark infringement isn't cool, and even tells users that "When creating or uploading free to use mods, car skins, helmets, cars, tracks etc users should seek official permission first from the copyright or trademark holders," something that didn't happen here, since Codemasters is the only organization with an official license for Formula 1. And being able to update a two- or three-year old game to the 2016 season isn't exactly helpful to Codemasters either, giving gamers one less reason to pay for this year's game.
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