MicroProse Reworks Nearly 2,000 Textures as Geoff Crammond Racing 4 Hits Licensing Problems

MicroProse's Steam revival of the 2002 Formula One simulation Grand Prix 4 has required replacing 1,987 textures to remove expired real-world branding, and the publisher is asking fans to vote on period-appropriate replacement names for teams, drivers and sponsors.

MicroProse's Steam revival of Geoff Crammond Racing 4 has run into the less glamorous side of videogame preservation: expired real-world licenses. The title was originally released as Grand Prix 4 in 2002 and recreated the 2001 Formula One season with official teams, drivers, sponsors and branding. Returning the game to commercial sale decades later means those agreements must either be renegotiated or removed, and MicroProse says reaching all of the relevant rights holders in 2026 has proven difficult. The publisher has already replaced 1,987 textures to strip out branding it can no longer legally use. With just under 300 brands represented in the original game, the process is far from trivial. MicroProse is now asking fans to help invent period-appropriate replacement names for teams, drivers and sponsors through a community vote running until October 14. This is a fascinating example of why preserving licensed games is uniquely complicated. The game code may survive perfectly and modern computers may have more than enough performance to run it, yet commercial distribution remains constrained by contracts negotiated for a specific historical season. Racing games are particularly vulnerable because authenticity depends heavily on real cars, circuits, advertising, team identities and drivers. Similar problems affect sports games, licensed soundtracks and film adaptations. Preservationists can often maintain original copies privately, but a publisher attempting an official rerelease must comply with current rights. Geoff Crammond's Formula One games are important enough to justify the work. Crammond established a reputation for unusually sophisticated racing simulations stretching back through Revs and the original Formula One Grand Prix. Grand Prix 4 became one of the defining PC racing simulations of its era, with detailed physics, changing weather and a dedicated modding community that has kept the software alive long beyond its commercial lifespan. MicroProse's solution is necessarily imperfect. Fictional replacements cannot reproduce the exact 2001 championship represented by the original. On the other hand, removing or renaming protected material may be the only practical route to keeping the game legally purchasable. The project reveals a core tension in retro preservation: sometimes preserving software means changing the very historical details people want preserved.