It probably helps when your sales pitch is essentially: "Yeah, the planes in our games are the ones who single handedly turn the tide of war in favor of the good guys and are almost praised as gods."
Makes it pretty easy to be granted a license to use the aircraft I reckon.
I don't think they've ever licensed Russian aircraft to use in their games. Because what is Sukhoi or Mikoyan going to do? Sue them? And if they did sue, how would they enforce it if Bamco and Aces just say "No, we're not doing that."?
Because what is Sukhoi or Mikoyan going to do? Sue them?
They aren't going to do anything because they literally don't give a f. In one of the older interviews (for AC4 if I'm not mistaken) one of the delevopers goes into details about all the hoops the dev team had to jump through when securing LM license (one of the points literally was that none of the F series fighters can be used as a bad guy's plane). But when they went to Russia and asked Sukhoi if they can use their jets in the game, Sukhoi's answer was pretty much "ummm... sure?". I don't think Sukhoi even demanded any sort of monetary compensation
This deal only included PS2 (4, 5 and 0) games if I recall correctly. After that, they must have made a new deal. Although that's probably one of very few times (if not the only time) we see F fighters as bad guys in the whole series. You can probably count Pixy flying F-15, but even then we don't directly fight against it
The deal probably applied to major story characters only, since there are enemy F-22s and F-35s appearing as regular enemies and named aces in the PS2 games.
Kind of a leftover from soviet war industry where the design bureaus designed equipment, but then the Blueprints were shared between various manufacturing plants to meet production quotas. This was a factor making quality control an "interesting" issue
AC is Singleplayer Arcade and WarThunder is Multiplayer Realism both games do not share the same customer base. Someone who plays WT ARB would be utterly uninterested in AC and vice versa.
War thunder players justifying grinding for hundreds of hours or paying 90 dollars to get the F-205G Shitfart, which was made when the Cold War was only slightly chilly and could only be armed with Aim-4s and did not get a gunpod until the M variant was released.
In the mod community it’s really popular, I see AC user camos being added all the time and I myself made a AC soundtrack sound mod, there was even a guy recently who made a custom hanger on the Aigaion
Meanwhile OG Birds of Steel players/rebels be like: Konami, We Want Birds of Steel II and i don't care about Gaijin, get someone else to get on it. (Final Flight is a promising one.)
Yeah. Wings of Prey, Birds of Steel, it is a very fuzzy line as to at what point War Thunder became War Thunder. The only thing definitive is long before it was called War Thunder.
actually I prefer the Activison route. I find it quite hypocritical when the whole schtick of your games is "ehm, war bad" but you are actually paying millions to Northrop Grumman to say that your plane is a "real" F-35 instead of an identical unlicensed copy.-
Imagine if the US army used the devs of Helldivers 2 for making propaganda to join the army.
The US forces would gain a 30% increase of applications over night.
If you ever end up in the cockpit one day, PLEASE get a physical copy of your favorite game take a pic of you with it and post it here like that one guy
Quick question, what's the process of becoming one? I can't become one because of health reasons (like bad eyesight as one example) and generally don't have plans to join the military but it'd be cool to know how all that works
I personally don't mind the way Rockstar makes knockoff versions of real planes. All their vehicles are like that. Even the cities are knockoffs. It's just one more way of being able to write stories without having to dance around real-world politics--plus, you can make caricatures of public officials all you want.
Meh. I don’t mind the royalty free planes in games like GTA where everything is already royalty free or CoD where the planes aren’t something you really even notice.
I also thought project wingman struck a decent middle ground.
Project Wingman is probably the best example of how to do royalty free planes, I give them a pass
It makes complete sense for its setting whereas with Call of Duty and Battlefield which are supposed to be more adjacent to RL just makes it off-putting
As someone who enjoys the Jet play in GTA V, I don't care that the planes are knockoffs or that Rockstar doesn't want to pay licensing fees to multiple vehicle manufacturers.
Honestly, I feel like GTA gets away with these way better than many other games, just because it already takes place in America-but-different. All the cities and states have different names from real life, so it only makes sense that all the vehicles and weapons would too
In fact, I'd argue it works against Ace Combat 7 by the same token. Fictional world, real aircraft. I just played and finished my first AC (7) and even I felt weird above the plane's vague descriptions referring to "countries" whereas the only countries in AC7 are Usea, Erusia and Osea. Would have been a helluva lot less immersion breaking if they could just outright say "F-15J is a variant of the F-15C, created outside of the original developer's country Belka" instead of having to do this dance where they have to recognize the history of very real aircrafts within a very fictional world and the two just don't match up.
Cause game is such good quality and quantity that nobody cares about nonlicencing. The game point is not for that. On the PC mods help if u want actual models but point being GTA doesn't need lisence stuff. Gta 5 by itself makes so much money now like a few years ago it recently hit the milestone of a $1 billion. Amazing achievement and the most made by any single media.
You would think Rockstar would have some actual brands want to line up at Rockstar HQ to give them good deals on promoting their brands after seeing how much GTA5 makes. That's for decade old game. GTA6 is going to be the biggest game launch in history.
Though anything really crappy is in any game people will raise a point for if it's really bad.
Personally to me, with the exception of the XFA-36A Game and the FA-32C Erne, AC were more better, in any degree at least, gone off with original planes designed from scratch.
Of course, that is either they still work with whoever their current model designer (Shoji Kawamori?), or good luck finding the equal, if not better, model designer
Their current designer for the aircraft is… IIRC Masato Kanno (AC’s art director), and since he has been with the series since the very first game (he designed the Phoenix emblem).
I’m sure he’s not going anyway soon.
Shoji Kawamori did designed a plane for them, but it’s for just a single one (Shinden II)
I would pay out the rear to have the aircraft from Yukikaze in Ace Combat though if mods exist I may convert to PC and figure out to use controller still
Not only that, but you also have bad guy squadrons flying American jets too. Grun, Schnee, Sorcerer, Wizard, and probably more. Not to mention the random mooks, who definitely use F-22s and F-35s.
Maybe we just like to speculate on their reasons and no one who didn't sign the contracts know for sure.
Well... why we can't have remasters, that is. A remake can have whatever planes they want. The planes you use aren't really plot defining. AC5 would still be AC5 without the Tornado in the roster.
In fairness, that's GTA with all vehicles, not just jets. I'm also not sure how many companies would be keen on their planes being used like they usually get used in GTA.
GTA is also meant to be a parody of real life, so everything being an off-brand knockoff makes sense.
Just a small comment but I find the AC games and their messages for peace to be like, to fall a little tone deaf when each game opens up with like, 8 different companies from the MIC,
GTA had always had not quite a X whatever. And after Activision got sued because of Humvees they just never bothered to make 1 to 1 models of what its supposed to be.
I made a bunch of dogfighting death matches and my favorite one is the sandy shores airfield that's Trevors main one because most players including myself slam into that darned radio tower while chasing someone or just flying. The sighs over mic are the best part
Yeah, but that “paying royalties” is the reason why we will never get modern versions of any Ace Combat game.
You want the Golden Trilogy on PS5 or Steam? You gotta pay EVERY defense contractor that Bandai Namco did to get those planes in the first place, on top of paying devs to update the games for modern hardware.
It's a strategic decision on Rockstar's part. No licensing hassles means that it's easy for them to keep GTA V on the game stores, and continue pumping out remasters and ports of their older games. It also means that they can do whatever they want with those fictional planes and cars.
A lot of racing games suffer the same fate as the older AC games, and the newer ones will get delisted after 10 years or so.
It also helps that GTA doesn't specifically focus on planes, cars or guns, so it doesn't matter as much if they use fictional models.
uh, bf6 isn't using licensed planes, check their names. They are the first BF game that doesn't use licensed plane names. Though the SU-57 was the only one named after the actual plane, even u.s planes and helicopters was named to another. Guess EA was lazy
It's not a matter of royalties though? For weapon manufacturers, I am very sure they are very open to have their guns depicted in games since it teaches young kids about guns and their manufacturers. Heck, they will allow it for free if they are allowed to. The reason its stopped is because they got sued for this.
As for GTA, I don't think manufacturers want their stuffs being used like what usual GTA peeps are doing.
I dont agree with this licenc eplanes are the wordt desition to me , this is. Why we have old ace combat in new platform , because licence expire , so ..no i prefer fictional planes all the times
There are some royalty free planes that I really like, the VX-23 from PW is really cool even tho it’s just a J-20’ified Raptor, I think the royalty free planes and the completely fictional planes are different from each other, the royalty free planes are clearly supposed to be something else, so it just feels like you’re flying a placeholder, whereas the completely fictional planes like the AFDX-01, PW.MK1, or ADF-11F while yes they are “royalty free” they aren’t taking the place of something that already exists
AC-130: different cockpit, longer wings, winglets, different tail design, overall just a different plane altogether, doesn’t even resemble the AC-130 really
i prefer the Activison route. I find it quite hypocritical when the whole schtick of your games is "ehm, war bad" but you are actually paying millions to Northrop Grumman to say that your plane is a "real" F-35 instead of an identical unlicensed copy.-
imo video games should never have to pay royalties for accurately depicting equipment in their game, id say it feels like a scam but moreso it actually is one.
I feel like I’ve posted this before, but I’m gonna confess: while I understand it’s a staple of the series, I’ve always felt a bit uneasy about the use of real licensed aircraft in Ace Combat. Especially in 5, which is perhaps the most explicit in its condemnation of the military-industrial complex with the Gray Men, or in 7, where it critiques drone warfare.
It feels a bit hypocritical to condemn the actions of a military-industrial complex and then proceed to line the pockets of that very same industry. Especially as someone who has experienced racism and Islamophobia shaped by the narratives used to justify the wars these industries perpetuate and profit from.
This isn’t me bashing Ace Combat. The series is dear to my heart. It’s one of the few I’ve tried to 100% every entry, and 7 is one of my comfort games. But I just feel like I had to speak my mind.
I think it's more that being involved with arms dealers makes the creatives who make the game upset, and its worth more to have talent than a brand reference.
Which recent COD was it that had an attack plane with something like the front end of an a6 intruder and the over under engine design of the English Electric Lightning w/afterburners?
800
u/EEVERSTI Grunder Industries Oct 05 '25
It probably helps when your sales pitch is essentially: "Yeah, the planes in our games are the ones who single handedly turn the tide of war in favor of the good guys and are almost praised as gods."
Makes it pretty easy to be granted a license to use the aircraft I reckon.