The Race is On: Sim Racing community looking for answers

In light of the uproar caused by the Callum Cross iRacing cheating saga, we at simRACE247 have yet again reached out to the big sim racing developers to provide transparency and honesty regarding the scourge that exists in our genre of esports.

In a recent article, we called for answers to three key questions:

• What is each sim doing to police and ban cheaters?
• How many drivers are banned every month in relation to cheating per title?
• Are the developers prepared to co-operate in producing a Name & Shame list of drivers and IP addresses linked with cheating in the style of a credit bureau?

Despite devs and their media departments ignoring our previous emails regarding these matters, these are questions – inspired by our team and our sources together – worse answers we believe the community deserves to hear.

With sim racing booming incessantly in terms of eSports, big-money competitions and corporate involvement, it is now more important than ever that there is a forceful and sustained crackdown on cheating.

In response to our articles over the last week, some have questioned our approach.

Why should developers tell us which measures and programmes they use to block cheaters? Surely that will just make things easier?

There is some merit to this argument. However, what we are seeking is clarity. The 150,000 (and growing) visitors to the site this past week devouring the news and follow-ups of the Callum Cross2 story is a testament to this.

No getting away from it or putting our heads in the sand hoping it will blow away, the issue of cheating in sim racing is a big concern within the community at this point in time as it threatens the credibility of all future esports competitions, be they amateur Sunday leagues or the big bucks prize-money competitions that are popping up almost weekly on the main simming platforms.

It is in the developers’ best interests to contribute to creating trust first, then calm and continued stability within the scene by confirming their commitment to the cause and releasing regular (monthly?) updates on the subject.

The integrity of their respective platforms must be assured for our sim racing community, we ask for transparency from the top, down. The ones that address the issue in plain sight are the ones that will gain unconditional trust. Right now all sim racing platforms are susceptible to simple mass cheating as detailed by Random Callsign.

So, we have once again sent emails to the big studios in question, outlining the questions in our open-letter to all the below devs:

iRacing, Sector-3 Studios (RaceRoom), Studio-397 (rFactor 2), Codemasters (and all their racing titles including F1 2020, Project Cars etc), Kunos (Assetto Corsa and ACC), Reiza (Automobilista series)

Now, all we can do is await their respective responses with the clock ticking, the race is on to ascertain which dev is the quickest to react, probably the one with the least to lose… Watch this space!.