The game company is paying money for the privilege to use the car manufacturer's product to promote their own product (the game), which is precisely what trademark law prevents, unless a license is obtained by the entity wishing to use the trademark in a manner that is not considered "fair use". This requires licensing, and that generally costs money or some other mutually beneficial exchange. The car manufacturer (or any trademark holder for that manner) may or may not choose to license their marks, however if they do decide to do so the terms of the agreement most likely involve money being paid to license the mark, and it may involve any other number of terms and conditions such as a date range that terminates creating a window of time with which the licensee may utilize the mark and how so, etc.

In other cases, it might work the other way around where say... Ubisoft offers a product placement in their video games such as Nokia phones and Coca cola placements on in-game billboards in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. That type of product placement isn't going to draw more people to buy the game because it has Nokia and Coke ads. The game publisher in this case is saying to potential advertisers "This space available, contact us for rates to advertise your product." and in the case of GRAW, Coke and Nokia as well as some other companies stepped up to the plate and said "Here's a wheelbarrow full of money Ubisoft, please advertise our product in your game because our target market will be playing your game and the advertising will be beneficial to us even though it doesn't benefit you or your game in any way other than the wheelbarrow full of money we threw at you to compromise all that is holy in gaming by spamming gamers with in-game advertisements that do nothing to improve the game experience.

See how that works? Coke and Nokia need Ubisoft's GRAW game more than Ubisoft needs coca cola or Nokia advertising billboards in their game. As a result, the money goes from Coke and Nokia towards Ubisoft.

However, in a high end video game about driving race cars, the game itself is a much more appealing product if you can race in a Ferrari or a Lambo or some other 6-7 digit price tag car in-game, compared to driving a made up vehicle shape with a made up fake name designed by the game company. Those car brand names existing in the game as well as the shape and image of the trademarked vehicles, and the vehicle's own performance dynamics simulated as accurately in-game as in the real world to the best of the game designer's engine capabilities brings high value to video game players that want an authentic racing experience and the ability to do so in a name brand race car that is being digitally simulated. The game company desperately wants this in their game knowing that with it their game is automatically sold at a premium and will draw more racing enthusiasts and be taken as a more serious simulator product than a "fake" arcade game with nonsense made up cars. They don't go to the car maker and say "pay us to put your car in the game or we'll make our own fake cars instead and sell 1/100th of the copies of our product as a result". No, they say "we're going to shoot money at you with a catapult Ferrari in hopes that you even turn your head at us and accept our money for the glorious privilege to utilize your company's product name and vehicle design and performance dynamics in our simulator as this will dramatically boost the sales and profitability of our product, and you have nothing to lose out of the deal.

The money changes hands from the one who most benefits from the agreement, and in the case of a racing game - the video game publisher and developer are the ones who benefit from the right to use trademarked cars, not the other way around. Does the car manufacturer get some marketing mindshare and mental impressions from people playing the game? Sure they do, but so what. It isn't like millions of people are going to go out and buy a Ferrari after playing GRID or something.

Is this genuinely confusing to understand? If so, stick to whatever you do for a living and don't go into entrepreneurship. Trust me. :)

So you're saying it has been confirmed here. Cool. Because it could very well be a psychological device for other purposes as well. Of course, we will never know how much these lists influence GOG's business decisions, but that's not my point.

But, like I said, I'm going to prepare some plots that demonstrate the relationship between votes and fulfilled wishes, and some trends & predictions & more on the way too :) Should be a fun exercise.

Whatever floats your boat.

That is straight forward enough, however, why would the car manufacturer go out of their way to stop the game which is already made and sold in the past, from going on GOG? Do they think GOG should pay them money for the license? Provided the original license had such limitations to begin with which i very much doubt? Whoever has the license to the game has the right to distribute it on GOG but similar to allot of other game rights holders, have pie in the sky fantasies that their game is too valuable to allow on GOG.

That's not really how it works. If the game company still has a license that allows them to create and/or sell products using that car company's trademarks, then the game publisher could sell the game on GOG If they wished to do so. It has to do with what the licensing arrangement is between the developer of the game and the trademark licensor, nothing to do with GOG really.

You're reading more into it than there is to read.

For that money you can buy all the nfs games up to the latest bunch on disc (2nd hand).

Not much chance these games will be on gog unless a major shift in selling strategy concerning classic racinggames with licensed cars by videogame companies.
NFS ProStreet, which is newer, was pulled last year from Origin.

Strangely, Street Racing Syndicate (by Namco), is afaik the oldest game with licenced cars still being sold on Steam.

Whats not really how it works? as far as i can tell you said exactly what i said?

I often do read more into things than there really is! But I was just curious to see car trademarks mentioned as a possible reason for the game not coming on GOG? And like i said, (and you said) its possible there is a limitation in the license, but seems unlikely. Why would a game company pay for a car trademark license that forbids potential distribution methods? It just seems very unlikely to me to be a possible reason?

It is industry standard practice to license trademark property in limited windows of time for use in specific product(s). This is how it is done across the entire entertainment industry really. A company licenses a mark for N years, then if they want to keep using it they renegotiate and license it for another N years. They're not going to pay 10 times as much money to license something for 50 years for a product with a planned 5 year life cycle because it would be a foolish waste of money. You'd be hard pressed to find very many examples where a game company has licensed a 3rd party trademark like this in perpetuity, it just doesn't happen.

Even if there are any exceptions to this, they are extremely rare exceptions that would not contradict the fact that the majority of everything else out there is done this way.

Thanks for that, interesting.

I would point out that the licensed item has an expiry of its own.... you know, because specific car models are only manufactured for so many years and then they stop production on it. But i don't specifically know if that will or wont change the arrangement you describe, so i will have to take your word for it unless at any point in time i find out otherwise.

I am questioning your sanity. :P

DITTO :P

I would love to have this game on gog too (2005 version of course)... it's one of the few games that I still have on a dvd.

No, unlike copyright and patent law, trademarks never expire. A game company may license trademarks and copyrights for a given game they're working on, and when their license expires their right to use the trademarks and copyrighted content also expires according to the terms of their contract. While copyright law does have an expiry date, as it currently stands that timeframe extends almost twice as long as how long computers have been in people's homes.

Trademarks do not expire ever, unless the owner of the marks does not hold up their requirement to enforce their mark and it ends up being used and diluted by 3rd parties without any legal repercussions of the mark owner. So no video game will ever be able to include a "Ferrari" car in it so long as the company that produces that car still exists, or some other company has acquired them and their marks - without the game developer licensing the rights to be able to use the Ferrari name and other elements of their trademark for example. Not now, and not in 200 years.

Even where the intellectual property in question is a matter of copyright law (and what we're talking about isn't), the length of time that copyrights exist for is so long that it is roughly twice as long in terms of years than personal computers have existed. By the time the copyrights for something have expired in the real world, almost a century has gone by more or less.

What we're talking about here however is a game licensing 3rd party intellectual property to use in a game for like 5-10 years however, upon which their contract has ended and they're no longer able to use the IP that they licensed and need to re-license again if they wish to continue using it. The idea that they can use it without license once it expires doesn't really hold any merit, because trademarks never expire and that is what this is all about really, and even if it was a matter of copyright law instead, they wont expire for 50-100 years into the future or more so it wouldn't apply to re-releasing a game in the here and now anyway, but maybe 100 years from now.

Do you have any reliable sources? Has this been tested in court? People repeat the same meme everywhere like it's obvious, but I would like to know better.

I've been always taught (including recently in a business class) that trademarks apply to product categories. Cars are not video games, video games are not cars. When I sell a video game, first of all it's not in the same product category as a Ferrari car or whatever other product Ferrari make, and second, I do not even claim to sell a Ferrari; it's not a part of the game's name or branding. My video game could include a virtual Ferrari, modelled around the real counterpart as closely as I could, but it is not clear to me that it would be a trademark infringement. A virtual item in a game is a far cry from a trademark infringement as far as I can see.

Another example: [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#/media/File:LinuxWasch3.jpg]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#/media/File:LinuxWasch3.jpg[/url]

EDIT: The only remotely relevant case I could find right now is here, http://www.tbennettlaw.com/createprotect/2015/1/5/is-that-fair-use-third-party-trademarks-in-film-print-video-games-and-other-media the case of Battlefield 3. Unfortunately it was settled out of court.

If the interpretation that seeing trade-marked real world products in a game somehow indicate that the trademark owner has sponsored or supports that use were true (and could potentially confuse consumers into thinking that these trademarked items are there because the owner endorses it), then I think that is a self-fulfilling prophecy come true.

Go back twenty years, I don't think anyone would've seriously thought that a Ferrari in some RandomCorp's racing game was actually made by or placed there by Ferrari. But now that people believe this licensing bullshit, maybe somebody would think so.

In effect, a whole category of "historically accurate" or documentary games would be de-facto banned unless you can obtain licenses for all the real-world items and references you want to place in the game (very unlikely). At the same time, documentary *as well as fictional* movies featuring real world items are just fine? I truly believe that this licensing requirement of in-game virtual products would not stand in court if it were challenged and battled for real.

If I had the time and resources to make a game, I would probably risk my personal finances to make and release a racing game full of real world cars, if only to challenge this BS. That'd be the kind of martyrdom (if it turns badly) I highly respect.