To my knowledge it’s currently only for liveries or tunes. (Or both.)
50k among downloads +likes+uses within that category (liveries or tunes).
It’s a pretty opaque process, and there’s No associated accolade or whatever. You find out you have it when you can set the buyout to 20 mil. I have a suggestion that there be badges/flair associated with it. That way people know you have it (and YOU know you have it).
I’ve got both, but I can’t recommend my tunes. My liveries get shared on the weekly threads for free.
How to achieve legendary tuner status.
Method 1:
Have a popular media channel (YouTube/twitch/kick/wtc)… feature your tune… done. Simplest… probably not the easiest. I’m not interested in that kind of a grind, so that’s out.
Method 2:
Get your tune featured in a popular channel. Similar to above, but you don’t have to have your own channel. I’ve actually used this method, and it’s how I got legendary tuner. The community is not super huge, so networking wise it’s not too difficult to get connected to folks that have a channel. Once the tune is out there, it can end up getting re-shared by bigger/more popular channels. This is honestly probably the easiest way, but it requires some people skills
Method 3:
Weekly tunes. We have resident tuners that make tunes for the weekly seasonal events. Make tunes for the trials, pr stunts, seasonal championships, etc. A lot of folks use that thread (and a similar one on reddit) to get their tunes.
Method 4:
Just toil away in obscurity. Hardest by far. The in-game visibility is REALLY low, so unless you have a tune that’s popular, you’re unlikely to get a popular tune unless it somehow ends up getting featured. A lot of the bigger name tuners have tons of followers and some of the shadier ones have friends/club mates/etc to artificially get a bump with respect to that.
This all mostly pertains to tunes, which are functional. While I imagine having a large platform could help with featuring liveries, it’s harder to get someone to download a livery unless they actually like how it looks. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s still folks that game the system by having folks download their livery in hopes of getting featured in the suggested liveries. There’s several spots for new liveries, and there’s other spots for liveries that are already popular. My most downloaded livery isn’t remarkable, but got featured early in the life of the release of the vehicle and caught enough downloads to end up in the popular section for a bit. Most of mine get featured in the new section for a few days and then are dropped off, so anything in the 10’s of downloads is a base hit, with something 100+ being really excellent for me.
I use a strategy similar to the weekly tunes but with liveries, trying to make sure to have some options for the various events. It’s fun, and I especially like doing requests for folks. Some of the requests have ended up being some of my most downloaded liveries, so it’s a win/win. The whole Manchester City pattern was a request, as was the Venom livery that I did.