[0xC0ncord]

About one of my favorite racing games of all time: "The game could have been removed for a number of reasons, including the closure of developer Bizarre Creations in early 2011, but the most likely cause was expired licensing of the real-world cars featured in the game."[1]

To me this is one of the most egregious examples of how licensing massively hurts consumers. The game is fully playable offline (and online with a patch) but cannot legally be sold because of an arbitrary restriction limiting the use of likeness of virtual cars in the game.

[1] https://delistedgames.com/blur/

[captn3m0]

The title track of the game, Smile by Crystal Method [0] is one of my all time favorites as a result of playing Blur.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EbkSMPbj_I

[big_man_ting]

woah, sick track!

[reddalo]

+1 for Blur, great game, it's like Super Mario Kart for grown-ups.

Too bad the only way to get it is by pirating it. But in these situations, doesn't piracy become morally acceptable?

[embedding-shape]

It becomes a moral imperative to pirate it and continue seeding it for others to also acquire, as a mean to help preserving something you cared about, apparently more than the owners of the IP/rights themselves care.

[rigrassm]

> It becomes a moral imperative to pirate it and continue seeding it for others to also acquire, as a mean to help preserving something you cared about, apparently more than the owners of the IP/rights themselves care.

Your words brought me right back to my teenage years sitting at the family computer at 12am babysitting a couple of song downloads to burn onto a CD for my friends to listen to on the bus ride.

Kinda random and only tangentially related but the thought brought a smile to my face and I just felt like sharing and saying thanks!

[embedding-shape]

Heh, I too remember the stress and rush of burning car-listening CDs right before long car trips, trying to set the write speed to slower and slower after each failed attempt, and finally succeeding burning it, only to find out that the car didn't actually have any CD reader at all, and could only do cassette. Waiting for DC++, Kazaa or LimeWire to finish a download only to find out that of course, it's some Britney song instead.

Simpler times for sure, unsure if it was actually better or not though, we certainly aren't as young as we used to be :)

[olyjohn]

Wow this looks pretty rad, I wish I knew about it before! Having real cars in the game really makes it more fun to me. I dunno why, but playing racing games with a bunch of fake cars isn't as exciting (Super Mario Kart being an exception). It's especially fun when you see one of your cars, or a friend's car in the game.

[reddalo]

Yes, I think it's super funny to race with a Ford Transit in Blur!

[literalAardvark]

It's one of the best arcade racing games ever made

[wilg]

This is the double edged sword of copyright, sometimes you want the artist to have control, sometimes you don't.

[wavemode]

People generally always want the artist to have control.

What people don't want, as in this case, is for a corporation to have control of the artist's work, and exercise that control mercilessly, thus actually reducing the reach and impact of the artist's work.

(Often, unknowingly to the corporation's own detriment. Having your cars appear in a game is literally free marketing, why refuse that?)

[TylerE]

The engineers at the car company that designed the body in the first place are also artists.

[wat10000]

They have as much control over this as I do, i.e. none at all.

[lenkite]

Probably copyright needs to be amended to belong to an individual or a team that comprises not more of 5 people. No corpos can hold copyright or if they do, they must upfront declare the individual/team that holds it.

[wilg]

The artist is allowed to be a group of people, or sell their art to another person or group of people, who then get the same control.

[LorenPechtel]

The problem is not a matter of artist control. Rather, it's a problem with how license agreements are handled--license agreements for product-breaking things with timeframes should generally not be permitted. It's a version of planned obsolescence.

[godzillabrennus]

Blur is my favorite racing game of all time. I keep a sealed copy of the 360 version in my home as a little homage to the fun I've had with it.

[skotobaza]

The same is currently happening with Forza games (at least Horizon ones, not sure about original Motorsport series). You can only buy the latest game, others have been delisted. You can still get physical copies, but the DLCs have been delisted as well, so you can't get the full version, at least not officially. And more than that, the online servers have been shut down as well.

It baffles me that this is still an issue, publishers are not concerned with implementing some sort of "kill switch" for expired content to keep getting money for the games. GTA also suffered from this.

[CasperH2O]

You may appreciate the game Split/Second, its in a similar vein.

[dom96]

oh yeah, I'm a fan of this game too. To my surprise, even though it's delisted I can still install it. That's certainly better than the alternative.

[reddalo]

I think you can install games that you bought (when they were available), even if they're delisted.

[dark-star]

yeah, that's the whole point, thye still let you install the games you bought because not doing so would open a huge can of worms and re-start the whole "are you really buying games on steam or just renting them?" discussion, which they are very keen on avoiding