Is a car license required?

Question

Game development

The project is a 3D scene in which users can add their arbitrary models (and this applies not only to cars) (that is, the developer himself has no direct relation to which brands appear in the scene)
Question: is it necessary to license such things and for what are the developers/creators of the project responsible for?
If we take, for example, the ETS car simulator (back in 2008), in which I noticed a strange thing: the names of the cars do not match reality, although all other details are exactly the same (Scania -> Swift, a drop instead of the Volvo logo, as far as I remember) . In this case, in the same Volvo, there should be no complaints about the fact that all the details were copied, although the logo was replaced?
However, everything rests on the fact that these are user-added models and can be customized in any way.

Answer 1

In this case, in the same Volvo, there should be no complaints about the fact that all the details were copied, although the logo was replaced?

De jure they can.
De facto - why do they need it.
Photo stocks, for example, do not accept photos with logos and all sorts of things with the author's design (more precisely, a bunch of restrictions), this is known.

Answer 2

If the game shoots, then they can sue. Otherwise, they have nothing to take from you anyway.
Now they can sue for everything. Have you read an article on Habré that they are suing because of tattoos on basketball players? It turned out that the tattoo artists of the type have the rights to the tattoos they filled, and the developers paid only the players whose images were used. So this is a world of absurdity and you can even be sued for using a corporate color if you use it unsuccessfully.

Answer 3

It seems that in some shooters, weapon models and names have been changed due to copyright

Answer 4

In this case, they make exactly the same appearance, but the icon is changed and the name instead of Volvo is made by Molvo, it seems that everyone understands, but de jure you can’t undermine.
Yes, they can sue if the game becomes popular. Money will not be taken from you, but the game will be deleted from Steam or Store 100%