When flight sim IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover was released in 2011, it was… OK. Over the next few years dedicated modders stepped in to make the game great, however, and in recognition of their work the actual studio behind IL-2 has just re-released their work officially.
IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover BLITZ Edition is the result. Officially sanctioned and released under the banner of original developers 1C, it combines the original game with all the work that the fans at Team Fusion Simulations – now given access to the game’s source code – were able to cook up.
This work includes new planes, new graphics options, new damage and weapon modelling, and updated visual effects.
You can buy BLITZ if you’re coming into the game fresh, but if you already owned Cliffs of Dover, BLITZ was added to your Steam library for free late last year.
I love not only that 1C did this, but even went out of their way to credit Team Fusion (and admit their own shortcomings, never an easy thing to do) in the announcement, writing:
Team Fusion has spent the past several years improving and fixing issues in the original Cliffs of Dover since its initial release. Their work has greatly improved performance and fixed serious issues. Earlier this year, 1CGS gave the source code to TFS allowing them to further improve the title. Their work is now officially a commercial product and no longer just a mod. Below is some of what is included in BLITZ.
Video game development text books of the future: This is a cool way to handle people modding your stuff and making it better.
Comments
7 responses to “Mods Saved A Game, So They’re Now An Official Product”
Did they compensate the modding team though?…Otherwise this seems more like putting a nice face on a company taking the hard work of modders for free and using it to make more money on their game that they didn’t bother fixing themselves.
Not everything’s about money. Maybe they did it for the love of the game?
Yes, the modders would have done it for the love of the game and love of modding – that’s why modders do it in the first place. The point is the game devs are now making money off of the modder’s hard work. Literally selling it as DLC for anyone who doesn’t already have the game.
Any other time a company uses work from modders and puts it in their game there’s usually a backlash over it even if they credit the modders….this time it’s suddenly ok?
The company still owns the copyright to the game and its IP. They are under no obligation to compensate them for their time unless they contracted them for their time.
Also. What evidence do you have that they were not paid?
Yeah – but you gotta remember here that 1C gave the source code to Team Fusion.That’s a massive “here you go. make what your true vision entails”. Been given the source code to go at it would have been 10 Christmas’ at once for TF. Thus, this scenario is a little unique…
When you buy the game normally mods are covered in the user agreement meaning they can not make profit from them in anyway. But the fact that they have now been thanked and given credit means the people who created and updated the mod can at least be know. While i can agree the whole just exposure argument sucks. I honestly think if they are getting any money for the work from new sales i don’t think we would be allowed to know as they would have signed and NDA or something similar in a contract.
Team Fusion is getting a cut from the official release and more so for the upcoming Mediterranean theatre expansion that they are working on at the moment.
Interestingly, a big supporter of the the project was Jason Williams the head of the competing studio who produce the Il-2 Battle of Stalingrad series. His efforts to help negotiate the deal were instrumental in getting 1c to hand over the source code to Team Fusion and see that the mod team get rewarded.