Why is Esports game different?

Hey, @Nellix82! We've had this discussion before, even on the original forum, and as far as I know there's nothing new here.

There are many reasons for a dedicated esports/competitive build, but they usually fall under two categories:

• Compatibility - The standard game is required to be compatible with a wiiiiide array of hardware, software and OS - well, at least in theory and at least good games are. Competitive builds are often only compatible with a single OS, a very narrow range of hardware, and may even require that only a few select apps can be running on the background. That's mostly for integrity reasons, anti-tampering and sometimes marketing deals as well.
• Early deployments - Having such a narrow margin of compatibility, it allows the devs to deploy updates earlier while they still work on making the standard patch smooth for the full breadth of officially supported hardware etc. In doing so they can also guarantee a level playing field for those already in the official competitions while us regular users still struggle with device parity etc.

Again, it's been years since it came to our knowledge that eSports have a dedicated build. I don't know what previous discussion you're alluding to where "many here had doubts" as this info has certainly be out there since the original forums.

It's also no secret that devs have long struggled with make cars truly equal performance-wise. My guess as someone as in the dark you here? They probably had to disable a bunch of features to "fix" (more like applying an ill fitting bandaid) what made "equal cars" unequal, thus making it impossible to release the patch simultaneously to the general player base.

Career mode? My Team? Online with crossplay? Heck, even F1 World - all those modes are probably disabled in the F1 esports build.

Logitech wheels? Thrustmaster wheels? Simagic? Moza? Heh, perhaps even plain regular Playstation and Xbox controllers, they're probably all incompatible and unusable with the eSports build.

I'm not really interested in delving into the weeds of the ethics or fairness of having a dedicated esports builds. Both because (1 ) it is not uncommon for the reasons I summarized above and ( 2) this franchise is so underwhelming right now I really don't care about the 0.01% of the player base having their own, smoothed out build.

I want to play My Team and the occasional multiplayer with a proper stewarding system. As of now, I can't even have basic online functionality or the peace of mind of putting up my rig knowing I won't have any FFB issues.