Halting the Enshittification of Online Sim Racing
When game designers make deliberate choices to keep multiplayer ecosystems open, they empower sim racers, communities, and developers. The open server systems of games like AC, ACC, AMS2, RaceRoom, and many others lower the cost of running servers by giving players choice of where to run. Openness creates flexibility for leagues to craft unique scenarios and run exactly what they want. A multiplayer system that is open to extension allows game developers to focus on building great sims while inviting participation from passionate tinkerers and hackers to build surprising value and innovations that make the games even better. And yet every new sim racing title is feeling the pressure to form walled gardens where every aspect of the online experience can be restricted. Why?
Before answering that, I need to explain what "enshittification" is. I grew up in the 90s during the emergence of the internet, when it was still open and good. A few years ago when I heard the term enshittification coined by Cory Doctorow, it immediately resonated with me. This term describes the phenomenon we observe in major internet platforms (i.e. Facebook) that fueled their initial growth by creating immense value for their users, but then intentionally degraded or enshittified that value as their user base grew in order to shift value from end users to business users. Essentially, they sell you to publishers and advertisers. And in the end stages of enshittification even the business users get owned when the platform is intentionally made worse for everyone to increase profits for the platform's shareholders.
Now, it's not all that bad in sim racing, yet... But, I don't think it is a coincidence that the companies who have created the largest online networks of players are also the ones who are the most closed, and the ones that can get away with charging monthly subscriptions and high prices for content. When we look honestly at the state of sim racing multiplayer, I think we're witnessing an enshittening. iRacing is the gold standard, and players love how it makes easy what was once difficult, technical, and messy about finding a balanced race to run. But, iRacing is a walled garden designed to keep its network of players paying monthly subscriptions and $11 per car, in perpetuity. LMU's approach with racecontrol.gg is similarly restrictive, they're making it the only way to launch an LMU race server. They charge a subscription for the privilege, and prevent running a server anywhere else. Even lowfuelmotorsport (LFM), which is mostly a benevolent community effort, is incentivized by enshitty economics. LFM's scale and the reality of network effects keep LFM players stuck to the platform because there's no other viable place to play. So, LFM can provide the bare minimum of value via an objectively terrible UI where finding a race forces you through as many third-party click ads and gear ads as can possibly squeeze onto a web page hoping for accidental mis-clicks to generate ad revenue.
If we allow closed systems to be the norm, I predict we'll see more and more exploitation of sim racers. First we'll be sold out to business partners and third-parties that will pay a premium for access to our eyeballs, data, and expendable incomes. Ultimately, business partners will be fleeced too when major platforms charge a premium for their unique ability to guarantee ever more invasive and pushy ad impressions on racers. Even when everyone realizes it has all been enshittified, the switching costs will be too high to do anything about it. All the great games that don't exploit us unceasingly will be labeled "dead."
There's good news though! Take heart! We can battle back against enshittification on internet platforms and in sim racing by demanding and seizing the means of computation. Practically, as players, this means running our own race servers and choosing games like AC, ACC, AMS2, RaceRoom, and others (and hopefully AC EVO) that embrace open ecosystems and interoperability over lock-in. Developers, tinkerers, and hobbyists must willfully embrace access to servers and data as first-class concerns.
I created Racetrim to build professionally crafted, privacy focused, and simple tools to connect sim racers and enable self-organization of great racing events and communities. Making ACC servers something anyone can run at the cost it takes to run them, regardless of technical skill, is the first step along the mission. I believe there is potential for players who play on open systems to have multiplayer experiences that are equal to, or even better than, what they get from walled garden platforms like iRacing and LMU. It's early days, but I think we can have it all without lock-in or exploitation. Interoperability is key to Racetrim's mission. If you want to run servers with us, we strive to make that as simple as possible, but we'd also like to enable players to run their own servers on their own hardware if that's something they want to do.
There's a great future available for open sim racing ecosystems, if we'll choose them over walled gardens. I hope to see you on track in a DIY server sometime soon. Be kind, have fun, and race well!
If you want to respond with support, criticism, or constructive feedback please email will@racetrim.pro.
If you want a community that wants better ACC pub lobbies that aren't exclusively Monza or Spa, come join our discord.
If you want to try Racetrim for free to run an ACC server for PC, sign in with STEAM at https://app.racetrim.pro.