“I want to address some of the rumours and accusations that have been circulating in our community recently. We are proud to say that all content and libraries used for the production of Rennsport are created by us, commissioned, or licensed appropriately,” begins the statement from Rennsport CEO and Co-Fouder, Morris Hebecker.
Make no mistake, these are unprecedented scenes in sim racing, the quote above (part of a longer blog post on the game’s website) tries to clarify the development process for the Competition Company’s upcoming Rennsport driving simulator.
In the recent week, posts within rival simulator rFactor 2’s forum appear to show what could be lines of its developer Studio 397’s code within the closed beta of Rennsport. This threw up questions of validity, but also licencing and if it stacks up against Rennsport’s previous claims of a “custom physics engine.”
Rennsport’s statement followed just hours after Studio 397 and Motorsport Games issued their own comment that began with: “Motorsport Games has not issued a licence for rFactor 2 technology to any game developer at this time nor are we aware of licences issued by Studio 397, a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorsport Games, prior to our acquisition of the game, development team and attached technology.”
The Rennsport rebuttal goes on to mention the use of third-party integrations, such as the Unreal Engine itself (used for graphics, in this instance, paired with a different physics engine), MoTeC and FMOD, but crucially it does not directly address the underlying physics.
Potential ‘from scratch’ U-turn
“We have here our custom physics engine, and that’s working in parallel with Unreal Engine,” said Krzysztof Szczech, Rennsport’s Lead Programmer to Traxion.GG in June 2023.
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