Dear Forza Motorsport fans

Sad news, this game is going to be delisted from Xbox Games Store, Microsoft's digital store, and Game Pass Library along with its DLCs by September 15th, 2021 (Which is exactly 6 years after the worldwide launch of Forza Motorsport 6), due to licensing expiration, just like when each Forza installment becomes 4 years old they get removed.

Forza Motorsport 7 Shifts to End of Life Status September 15 – GTPlanet

Oh well, I hope Forza Motorsport Reboot and Gran Turismo 7 both will be better than Forza Motorsport 7 and Gran Turismo Sport.

This is quite surprising. I guess the game is almost 5 years old at this point, but it's still the newest Forza Motorsport game out there and I still play it with friends quite often.

In the entire Forza Motorsport series' multiplayer modes, it's always better to play with your friends via private lobbies because due to the public lobbies having a lot of rude and ignorant players as love to ram into others in demolition derby fashion.

For the coming up next installment of Forza Motorsport, I guess the new trailer will come by mid-2022.

Anyway, feel free to join my speculation and appreciation thread.

Gran Turismo 7 and Forza Motorsport Reboot speculation and appreciation thread - General Discussion - Giant Bomb

So, this is going to make seeing Forza Motorsport 7 ads in Forza Horizon 3 feel pretty awkward.

Just like how older Forza installments still have DLCs being advertised while their life spans ended ages ago.

@isomeri: Assuming that you own the game and are not playing on Game Pass you can continue to play it with friends because the multiplayer servers will stay up and anyone who owns a copy can play it. If you don't own it it's on sale for like $10 right now.

I don't know why anyone is surprised at this. All Forza licenses are for 4 years at this point (they have been sunsetting the games after 4 years for licensing reasons for a long time now) and this is perfectly in line with what they've done in the past. The reason why the most recent game is getting sunsetted now before the newer version is out is because they've taken much longer than expected to launch Forza 8. Basically they did not predict that the retooling would take as long as it has.

On the other hand I think the Horizon series is more popular at this point, and how many copies of Forza 7 could they have been selling in recent years? Anyone who wanted the game has already bought it and anyone who has bought it can continue to play it, so as a practical matter except for Game Pass subscribers this doesn't really matter, and for Game Pass subscribers they can pick up a copy very cheaply.

@facelessvixen: Forza Horizon 3 was sunsetted last year. So it's not very different from playing an old game on an old system that has licensed advertising for old products.

@bigsocrates: @facelessvixen: @isomeri:

Here are my theories on how the Forza Horizon series becomes more popular than Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo series?

• Forza Horizon is an open-world arcade racer mean while Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo series are both sim-cade racing games.
• Most arcade racers are meant to be more accessible for any kind of car lovers while simcade and sim racers both require to have more focused on physical momentum management.
• Most players who play arcade-style racers on PC, home consoles, or handheld consoles would prefer to use buttons and analog stick/d-pad to accelerate and steer.
• Meanwhile, a lot of players on simcade and sim racing would prefer to use steering wheels with force feedback and pedals so they can precise their steering, throttle, brake, and shift gears while using the clutch pedal for their virtual cars, aiming for the sector and lap timings on the racing circuits.

I also believe that there are quite a lot of arcade-style racing players who would personally want to use the racing wheels with force feedback to play something like Forza Horizon, Test Drive Unlimited, The Crew, Driveclub, and Need For Speed so they can feel some realism.

I think this whole "sunset Forza games" thing is real fucking shitty.

@justin258: Why?

How is it different than a game going out of print in the pre-digital days? Or other games getting delisted for licensing reasons (which happens all the time?)

If you bought a Forza game...you can still play it. Multiplayer will remain active. If you buy a used copy it will work (so it's not even like it's impossible to get if you don't have it.) The only thing you're losing is the ability to buy it digitally and the ability to buy DLC, but digital copies and the DLC generally get dirt cheap right before the sunset anyway.

The number of people actually affected is pretty small. There may be some people on Gamepass now, so that does change the calculus slightly, but people who bought DLC for the game to play on gamepass are getting a token to extend their playtime in August, and if you want to keep playing indefinitely you can just buy a copy for $10. The game is available physically and the patch servers are up so there aren't major preservation issues.

I don't see why this is shitty compared to how a lot of games get handled (such as multiplayer servers going down soon after purchase.)

I mean, all of that stuff is shitty as well. Rockstar ripping songs out of a game I purchased years ago is also an amazingly awful thing to do, relatively speaking. But old games going out of print happens for a practical reason - there aren't enough people buying this game to justify continuing to print it out and put it on store shelves, so they stop doing it.

I think I mentioned this in a thread about NFTs a few months ago - digital distribution has made media one of the only resources we have in practically unlimited quantities. To turn around and reintroduce scarcity by simply cutting something off is the worst. What if I don't like some of the new features of Forza 8? Or I dislike the setting of Horizon 4 and would rather look into 3? Or what if I'm interested in how the series evolved and I want to see it from beginning to now? You can make the argument that these games are all "basically the same thing", but so what? If they're the same thing then why not just continue updating Forza Motorsport 7? It's already been proven that you can just push out a big graphics update for your current-gen console, so... why not do that if they're practically the same game?

I understand that this is more complex than mustache-twirling evil executives trying to get customers to purchase the latest and greatest so they can be sold more microtransactions - there's also a bevy of licensing rights to music and cars and whatnot to consider here. More than likely, those rights are the actual culprit behind these "sunsets". Still, if I'm not mistaken the Forza games are the most popular racing games on the planet right now and they're owned by one of the most profitable companies in human history. Surely they could just purchase those rights in perpetuity?

As for other games getting delisted for licensing rights, games not made by the biggest companies in the world - yeah, that's also a shitty result of several different machinations that I don't understand quite well enough to speak authoritatively on - but, yeah, copyright laws screwing over my ability to buy old games is a real motherfucker.

@justin258: Old games went out of print for a lot of reasons, including licensing agreements expiring.

The answer to your "What if I would rather look into an older game" is in my prior post. Physical copies. Forza Horizon 3 has been sunsetted for awhile and a new copy of that game is $21 on Amazon.com right now. Forza Horizon 2 is more expensive new, but a used copy can be had for $22 on Amazon. These are not difficult games to get after the fact. Even Forza Horizon 1 is available for under $20 used on Amazon, and is backwards compatible.

Would I prefer these games to be available for purchase digitally forever? Of course. But lots of games go out of print or have their servers taken down, and at least the sunsetting is predictable and people are given months of warning to make whatever decision they want to make regarding the games.

I think that Microsoft has actually handled this stuff relatively well by industry standards. I don't think taking a game off sale with lots of warning and a big discount is "real fucking shitty." I'd say it's mildly disappointing.

As for perpetual licensing...that can be very difficult with auto manufacturers, who tend to be very tough to work with for game licensing for a variety of reasons (such as them not wanting people to get really into old versions of their cars when they are trying to sell the new ones.) Could Microsoft as a company afford it? Of course, it's one of the biggest companies in the world. It could probably buy Ford and General Motors with just its cash on hand (estimated at about 135 billion dollars as of 2020.) But that doesn't mean that this particular game would still be profitable if it splashed out for perpetual licenses, or that there's a big market for a 4 year old racing game going forward. At some point you have to let companies make rational business decisions, and as long as they are very clear about what's going on, give good warning and discounts before the games go unlisted, and produce physical copies that can be bought on the used market, I really don't see this as a major issue. It's not ideal, but it's also not arbitrary. They explain that it's the licenses that are the cause, and they're not doing it just to milk the franchise (since the old games remain playable for franchise fans anyway, so it probably doesn't do much for new game sales.)

It's not ideal but on the list of sins of video game publishers I put it pretty low on the list, and I think they handle it well with clear messaging and plenty of support for people who previously bought the game.

Also the licensing of cars here is likely related more to Trademark than Copyright.

@bigsocrates:

Old games went out of print for a lot of reasons, including licensing agreements expiring.

The answer to your "What if I would rather look into an older game" is in my prior post. Physical copies. Forza Horizon 3 has been sunsetted for awhile and a new copy of that game is $21 on Amazon.com right now. Forza Horizon 2 is more expensive new, but a used copy can be had for $22 on Amazon. These are not difficult games to get after the fact. Even Forza Horizon 1 is available for under $20 used on Amazon, and is backwards compatible.

Would I prefer these games to be available for purchase digitally forever? Of course. But lots of games go out of print or have their servers taken down, and at least the sunsetting is predictable and people are given months of warning to make whatever decision they want to make regarding the games.

I am aware of all of these things.

Also the licensing of cars here is likely related more to Trademark than Copyright.

Admittedly I got these mixed up (I don't need a clarification, really).

I think that Microsoft has actually handled this stuff relatively well by industry standards. I don't think taking a game off sale with lots of warning and a big discount is "real fucking shitty." I'd say it's mildly disappointing.

So we can agree to disagree.

Worth noting, this isn't something I'm raging at. I am not posting this as some guy frothing at the mouth about how MS is shutting down a game. As I tried to clarify, this isn't a case of me thinking that Microsoft is evil. I do think that MS could do more to ensure these games stay available and I don't think that their policy of putting games on deep discounts and alerting people before they're sold dulls how I feel about this - but, again, I understand that these decisions are made because Microsoft feels they're a fair compromise between what's healthy for business and what's good to their customers.

As for perpetual licensing...that can be very difficult with auto manufacturers

If it helps, I think the trademark laws and copyright laws and what consumers want out of these games contributes more to the shittiness of the situation than Microsoft themselves. Generally speaking, I think the Microsoft of the past few years seems to be trying to be pretty consumer friendly, at least on the surface - this particular case is not usual for them and I don't think Phil Spencer and Co. are necessarily fans of this decision. I still think it's shitty that older Forza games can't be purchased digitally.

It's not ideal but on the list of sins of video game publishers I put it pretty low on the list, and I think they handle it well with clear messaging and plenty of support for people who previously bought the game.

I can agree that it's nowhere near the top of the "worst things publishers do" list and that if it must be done, Microsoft handles it well enough.

Still a shitty situation!

On a final note, yes, I am aware that other games are taken off of digital shelves, sometimes without any warning or sales or anything, but this thread is about Forza specifically, and I think the weight Microsoft has to throw around puts them in a sort of special case.

@justin258: To me, I believe that Microsoft also wants Xbox and PC players to jump onto the newer installments of the Forza series.

I just tried to download the trial of Forza 7 from the Microsoft store so I could decide whether to buy it before the delisting. It will only offer to install it on my old computer... Refuses to put it on my current computer, not my Xbox one. Glad to see the Microsoft/Xbox store ecosystem remains terrible after all these years.

This is why I prefer Steam.

Im with @justin258 in that it sucks that games get pulled because "such and such" is in the the game, when i have multiple copies of Back to the Future trilogy riddled with product placement that i can happily stream or purchase in new physical formats, and it has never been taken off the market. You can buy Blu-ray copies of some of the shittiest movies from the 80's that people keep buying just because there so bad there good, and some of them are just bad. But Mega Man Legends gets held up because of an energy drink, Silent Hill has problems because of voice actors, and GTA has problems with music. There seems to be legal problems of even porting games to new platforms that causes issue.

With so many franchises in video games from a sales standpoint im sure companies are happy that you have to buy the new version while the old version gets taken off the market. But im sure ill be able to watch the Fast and Furious movies 20 years down the line, but any game based on that franchise? Almost guaranteed no. I know there are massive technical differences from running an old game on new hardware vs. running a movie in a new format, and games don't necessarily age as well as movies, but how do movies get around all this legal BS while games have such a hard time? Why cant i easily get a new copy of that PS1 Die Hard Trilogy after i watch the movies because im on some crazy Die Hard marathon?

And also not in a "this is shitty" way. More of curious whats the difference over there in movie land vs. video game land. Disks are pennies to make, the game has been made, why cant a get a new copy of Die Hard?

@lego_my_eggo: The answer is that...it does happen with movies and especially TV shows. It all depends on how the contracts were written and how the rights were structured. Many TV shows did not get DVD releases or streaming deals for many years (or ever) because of music rights, or they had the music changed when they were released for the same reasons. It's less common with movies because movies tend to use fewer licensed songs, so what's there can frequently be re-licensed, but it definitely does happen.

It all depends on how the contracts are structured and how much demand there is for the product. For something like Back to the Future, which came out when home video already existed (so could be considered in the licensing deals) and is a massive hit with huge potential video profits it's almost always going to happen. There are smaller movies that you may not even know about that got buried over rights.

One big difference is that films (at least mainstream films) are union projects so there's collective bargaining for the rights of all the actors etc... meaning that studios don't have to individually renegotiate with them because the video rights are covered by the union contract. But most issues aren't about actors, they're about music or other elements.

Another difference is that films are just pictures and don't recreate the assets of everything in them the same way that video games do. So for example if there's a film where a Ford truck drives past the camera during a city street scene, the movie doesn't need to get the rights to that truck because they're just photographing reality and Ford doesn't have the right to ban photography of its trucks out on the road. If a video game has a Ford truck in it that's an image of the truck and it's using trademarked assets like the Ford logo (and possibly a copyright claim on specific artistic elements of the car) so a lot more stuff has to be cleared.

Video games rights issues are a combination of nobody really thinking about future re-releases early on when stuff just started getting licensed and a lack of interest in most old games. But the underlying concepts and contracts aren't fundamentally different. They're just a bit more complex.

Is it worth getting the Ultimate Eddition? I probably won't need more cars than the standard game has, but are the dlc tracks more interesting than the base ones?

It's up to you to get the Ultimate Edition if you wish to have most DLC cars but unfortunately, they don't have any DLC tracks at all.

@gtxforza: Thanks, sounds like I should just get the standard edition then.

For me, I've got the Ultimate Edition physical copy with a model car included since I've pre-ordered it for my Xbox One back in 2017.

@judaspete:

While I have the Ultimate Edition, because I love cars, the Standard Edition is fine. It has more than enough cars from each category to satiate your wants.

I picked up the standard edition yesterday. Double the price for 60-some additional cars doesn't seem like a good deal. I'm not the biggest Forza guy and I haven't played Motorsport in ages so $10 to mess around with the latest version seems like the right way to go.