Posted in "General" as this appears to be relevant to all train sim products.
It has come to light following discussion in this thread http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...BNSF-branding-banning-to-DTG-Railworks-TS2015 at TS.com that BNSF have imposed some fairly rigorous restrictions on where content displaying their corporate logo and identity (which includes former constituent companies such as BN, NP etc.) can be sold or distributed.
Essentially you need a licence and the content can only be sold or distributed where the BNSF trademarks are registered, which is in fact just the USA.
So it's not just DTG who have been affected by this, having pulled all their BNSF connected items from Steam to other than customers resident in the US, potentially it's any train sim producer or content developer, including Trainz. I can't recall if there's any BNSF or derivative content built into TANE but I'm sure there is in TS12 viz. Tehachapi and definitely in TS2010. Avery - Drexel (Milwaukee Road) possibly affected? There's also potentially 1000's of items on the DLS which, by the letter of BNSF's edict, should only be available to customers within the US. Hopefully Tony and his lawyers are already looking into this but given the BNSF stance seems rather intractable, I would suggest if you want anything BNSF or predecessor companies items, get them now lest it be too late.
And it probably wouldn't hurt to sign the petition linked from TS.com, either.
It has come to light following discussion in this thread http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...BNSF-branding-banning-to-DTG-Railworks-TS2015 at TS.com that BNSF have imposed some fairly rigorous restrictions on where content displaying their corporate logo and identity (which includes former constituent companies such as BN, NP etc.) can be sold or distributed.
Essentially you need a licence and the content can only be sold or distributed where the BNSF trademarks are registered, which is in fact just the USA.
So it's not just DTG who have been affected by this, having pulled all their BNSF connected items from Steam to other than customers resident in the US, potentially it's any train sim producer or content developer, including Trainz. I can't recall if there's any BNSF or derivative content built into TANE but I'm sure there is in TS12 viz. Tehachapi and definitely in TS2010. Avery - Drexel (Milwaukee Road) possibly affected? There's also potentially 1000's of items on the DLS which, by the letter of BNSF's edict, should only be available to customers within the US. Hopefully Tony and his lawyers are already looking into this but given the BNSF stance seems rather intractable, I would suggest if you want anything BNSF or predecessor companies items, get them now lest it be too late.
And it probably wouldn't hurt to sign the petition linked from TS.com, either.