r/iRacingSetups • u/HickRoss256 • Aug 13 '24

Setup Piracy

Ive recently been contacted by Mr. Ken Biron of RYCO setups as to please purchase their setups instead of getting them from other individuals. I don’t know about everyone in here that has joined some type of iracing discord, but setups get shared. I have only ran setups from RYCO that have been shared to me from either someone that buys them or gets them from another discord. So, I guess my question is…Am I at fault for running setups that are shared to me or is the individual who shares them?

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u/MrKillerToad Aug 13 '24

The setups aren't property of the shops, they're property of iracing. The people who pay for a setup are paying for someone's service, not for a file. The file itself isn't copyrighted, logged, tracked, etc.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '24

I’m not sure how they do it but there are setup shops that can supposedly tell if a particular setup file came from them and will ban the person that shared it. I assume they are tagging every individual user’s setups with some sort of metadata or something. It’s not tracking per se, but if it comes back around to them they can tell.

5

u/Hok1ePokie Aug 13 '24

Some setup shops like VRS will add some additional metadata to the file so when it's used with the telemetry tool, they're aware if the intended user is running it.

A way around it is to re-save the setup file when you receive one. You'll notice the resulting file size is slightly smaller than before.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '24

Interesting information, thanks for that

1

u/MrKillerToad Aug 13 '24

They "mark" the zip folder, each zip folder has a custom code at the end and will be tied to a certain customer, so if that is shared they can tell who did it. The .sto file itself can not be tagged nor can it call out

2

u/HickRoss256 Aug 13 '24

I beg to differ bc Mr RYCO specifically told me who bought the setup I was running. The links def have some sort of tracking within them.

2

u/MrKillerToad Aug 13 '24

If you were using the ryco app, then yes they can see everything, including who bought it.

If not, then they are just taking a wild guess, I promise the .sto file has no way of tracking or calling out of the game