Think about it for a second.  If we have to follow someone else's rules to sell on Steam to get to users of DTG... then of course it's an impingement.  There are rules to be followed.  LOTS of them.  I can't speak to them but... trust me when I that this is NOT at all like it is with P3D or FSX.   Really.  Not.  On those platforms, there's absolutely no question that we are allowed to do what WE want.  We want to make a SR-71?  Sure.  No one is stopping us.  We want to make a crappy plane?  Sure!  No one is stopping us.  We want to make a plane that no one will buy?  Sure!  We want to make a plane, sell 400 units and then redo it from scratch, WE CAN (even though we should not!)!

Imagine if you will, this scenario:  We decide that we want to do a SR-71.  DTG says... sorry mate but we're not taking LM type aircraft.  Or, worse yet, what about weapons?  Has ANYONE asked about that? Many of you here don't care about that but many of our clientele do.  What if we want to do an F-4 and DTG says "sorry, can't allow that... SWS already made the deal..."  What then?   There are so many unanswered questions at this point that it's a large concern.  

The "grey area" that Kevin speaks of is one large one.  How are we supposed to pay LM 140K for something that makes less than that in it's full lifetime?  Airbus now wants a piece of the pie...

Boxes.  

I'm not saying we won't support this platform but it is with a great deal of hesitation that we're approaching this.

53 minutes ago, Milviz said:

The main problem with Steam is that they take 30% right off the top.  

We've had real freedom for the past 8 years.  Choice.  Unlimited.

Yes, we have had it great for years, but no other game this.  FSX was an abnormality (well X-Plane also) in the industry.  Have you tried working in DCS?  You get NO freedom.  As for the %, FSX/P3D has a very small (and rather picky) customer base.  If FSW gets a large customer base, you make up the loss of 30% rather quickly.  It all depends on the number of active users.  Thats why im making a product to test out the waters.  I have gotten good sales in FSX:SE, on top of the sales I do myself and other web pages.  

We've got a couple of products on Steam and they're not doing too good though admittedly, they're older ones.  That said, even for those, we get better sales of them on our other vendor streams not to mention our own store.

We're going to try a couple and see... test the waters.

But, and this is important, if it means supporting 3 different sku's, somethings going to have to stop.

We won't work in DCS for one reason and one reason only: Igor.  (if you've worked in the DCS field, you know all about this) 

2 hours ago, Milviz said:

We've got a couple of products on Steam and they're not doing too good though admittedly, they're older ones.  That said, even for those, we get better sales of them on our other vendor streams not to mention our own store.

We're going to try a couple and see... test the waters.

But, and this is important, if it means supporting 3 different sku's, somethings going to have to stop.

We won't work in DCS for one reason and one reason only: Igor.  (if you've worked in the DCS field, you know all about this) 

Well, not that it matters for this board, but since I used DCS World for so many time, until, I decided I really prefer the flight dynamics of ww2 aircraft offered by IL.2 Battle of series, I wonder who Igor is ? Well, I even thought Milviz was involved in some of the upcoming projects, and also thought Wagner was the "business" man ?

For sure, at least the charm of the DTG team members here at AVSIM is certainly different from what I have experienced at the ED forums.... Their Support though, works very well, that I have to admit.

 

One other issue with Steam (which I do like for games, otherwise), is that DLC is presented as a flat list on the main store page. No categorization, and I don't know who determines the order of that list, i.e who gets listed on top.

It works for a flight sim like Aerofly FS2 on Steam because there are very few DLC items (yet). Take a look at the DLC for Train Sim 2017, and see the problem once the amount of DLC grows. The Steam UI isn't designed for massive amounts of DLC in different categories.

Obviously not an issue for early days, but something to think about if the DLC list grows. The Steam outlet for user-created add-ones is actually better, because the Workshop has category filters and a search function. Maybe DTG can work with Steam to set up a more structured DLC sales page.

Hi guys,

if you don't mind I would like to comment on "FSX/P3D was an abnormality". Why is that? Everything in software is moving towards standardtized frameworks, and even more frameworks of frameworks - has been for decades now. Multi-million $ enterprise solutions are built on JavaEE which was established as main stream around the year 2000. The reason is simple: the standartized approach guarantees accessibility and, as a consequence, support through third parties. And you have access to more resources. Programmers need time to learn the ins and outs of a framework, and that time is not measured in weeks - it is months or even years. As long as the framework stays well defined and a constant, that experience can be built up, and the number of programmers actually knowing what they are doing rises. Building "closed" software solutions is so last century...

I am always wonderding about sentences like "developers will flock" or "developers will support if". You cannot just go and develop every type of addon for every simulator. The sim has to have the prerequisites for it. If there is no powerful API, there won't be any programmatic solutions, like complex aircraft systems that the simulator doesn't provide, ATC, radar, fancy weather, things like FSUIPC - or any of the Lorby addons. I would love to develop for the X-Plane or Aerofly community - but sadly, for my type of addons, that is impossible in the current state of those sims.

What concerns me about Steam is the numbers. More sales sounds nice, but more sales also means more support requests -  especially on Steam where the "buy now" click is so easy, and even more so with complex products (who wants to read 100 pages of documentation for anything, right?). Lorby-SI is currently operating at a support rate of less than 2%, and if there were a lot more of those requests, that could not be handled in-house. No matter how the sales go, if the size of the community stays roughly the same, I could never afford to pay an extra person to handle public relations and support - I can't even make a living off the whole endeavour for myself. Larger companies on the other hand live off profit margins. They calculate their prices to cover their cost and leave a reasonable amount on top to cover losses with other products, R&D, support, etc. If a sale is going to end up below the profit margin, it is not worth it - simple as that. So selling on a platform with a 60% cut may not be an option for some, because they constantly stay below their margin, effectively losing money with each sale (strange as that my sound).

But we will see what transpires.

Best regards

Interesting discussion from user perspective [ how business model works ]

Key concerns imo importance order:

1 Simulated Aircraft need to be licence by the aircraft producer 

    - what about historic? or freeware?
    - high licence Fees?
    - no more competition within one platform [ e.g. iFly, Pmdg, wilco ]
    
2 Steam/Dovetail % cuts lowering Developer revenue/profits

    - not always volume compensate lower unit margin as total margin

3 Potenially imposed Quality Control limiting Developers and incensing costs, however may be beneficial for customers [ less beta aircrafts @ full price ]

16 hours ago, Gibbage said:

For many of us, it's well beyond just making money. I can safely speak for most 3rd party developer's and say its a passion.  It's our hobby!  To some, it's our livelihood. That's why some of us can get heated if they feel slighted, wronged or left out.  I don't know of any developers that got rich from doing this, so it's not about the money. 

Kevin "Gibbage" Miller 

It's always about the money! I know of a few people who have become millionaires from FS development, but they tend to not brag about their success or wealth. There would be at least a dozen companies who turnover  more than $1m a year just from FS addons; it's not hard to guess who they are.

 

 

18 hours ago, TheFlightSimGuy said:

+1 This is just getting unruly now. Aren't all of these people all trying to make money together? Why implode so preemptively? 

I agree. Regardless of my views on the issue, that was a very unprofessional response, and I would have expected better from a representative of a large developer such as PMDG.

2 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

but more sales also means more support requests -  especially on Steam where the "buy now" click is so easy, and even more so with complex products (who wants to read 100 pages of documentation for anything, right?).

Maybe your products have different customer base maybe your product are not intuitive and easy to use, which is something expected those days (I do not heard about you and your products until now, so I do not judge, just messing) , but it is not my point.

If I remember corrently when DTG will be your distributor for Steam, then they will provide customer support even you can redirect that customers to DTG. 

Buy ORBX product on Steam and try to make your support "ticket" on their official support forums. They will direct you to DTG. I get my support ticket soved by DTG when I had problems with Sim720 airport FSX:SE DLC and it was little bit complicated as only one part of scenery (their objects liberary) affected with slow loading - over 10 minutes more to start flight even SSD and rest vanilla sim, due to my antivirus sw.

They will ban/filter most of request due to "easy to buy" reason. You will be asked for help with some to try find reason of some non usual functionality and if you both decide that it is bug which have be solved, you will be asked for fix it. That is one of reasons why they ask for fee.

21 minutes ago, Jiri Kocman said:

Maybe your products have different customer base maybe your product are not intuitive and easy to use, which is something expected those days (I do not heard about you and your products until now, so I do not judge, just messing) , but it is not my point.

Not maybe - this is definitely the case. Unfortunately, you cannot have a high degree of functionality, realism and tons of options without complexity, customer expectations nonwithstanding. But I can't complain, on average I get at most 2 support requests for every 100 licenses sold.

Noone can "filter" direct customer emails, forum entries or support requests that come in over the "Contact us" forms. As long as there is a presence on the net outside of Steam, there will be those. At the very least, you have to answer them, and that is work too that has to be done by someone. Imagine only 10 people contacting you every day, asking for something. Even if you only spend a couple of minutes on each message (which you can't) you lose about 2 hours every day just for this. That is not a problem if you have someone doing nothing else, but it will kill productivity otherwise. And who is to say that you won't have to handle 10 times that amount? For that you already need three people...

Best regards

I really appreciate the 3rd party piece of flight simming and thank you for sharing your issues with us.  I founded and ran my own IT business for about 20 years.  There comes a time however that you have to make hard choices as it relates to your business.  I can see and feel your struggles just by reading on these forums.  But where I am going with this is, (quick abridged version) I ended up shuttering my business because of the new security overhead that was being imposed by the government on the small businesses I supported.  Since I was a very small company, I had three choices really, 1)hire more people and get them trained up or 2)change my business model to support only clients without these requirements or 3) shutter my business.  I chose number 3 because 1) I was a one man show and didn't want to hire anyone because I am a micomanager and felt as if no one would completely do the job to the same level as I do and I would have to charge my clients more, 2)if I chose option 2, my revenue would drop significantly and wouldn't be worth my time, so I chose option 3 and slowly shuttered my business and now I work for someone else.

So, I skipped a bunch of stuff in that analogy, but my point is (and I am sure I don't have to tell you) that you have to make a decision and move on.  I think it wise to be patient though because it's still early, but as with most business owners, they can generally see the big picture of things and can pretty much tell where your business is headed, but I know you guys are pretty smart and I am confident you'll figure out a way - I mean, that's what programmers do right - they solve problems.

Hang in there and see how all this plays out.  I wish you nothing but the best no matter how things turn out, but know that there are some of us that feel your plight and will support your decision no mater the outcome.

5 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

Noone can "filter" direct customer emails, forum entries or support requests that come in over the "Contact us" forms. As long as there is a presence on the net outside of Steam, there will be those. At the very least, you have to answer them, and that is work too that has to be done by someone. Imagine only 10 people contacting you every day, asking for something. Even if you only spend a couple of minutes on each message (which you can't) you lose about 2 hours every day just for this. That is not a problem if you have someone doing nothing else, but it will kill productivity otherwise. And who is to say that you won't have to handle 10 times that amount? For that you already need three people...

Best regards

I guess you can kindly redirect steam users  to propher support or just ignore them and stop providing support by email at all. Many, especially well known FS devs stop providing email support and they are using some special pages with comfirmation that customers contact right person or ticket system accessible only by direct customers and so on., if your business grow, you have adapt even it seems like you show middle finger to your customers.

If it will make better profit with small initial investment, then it is win-win scenario. And of course it provides better bug trakcing and even automated responses when problem is solved.

 

6 hours ago, Milviz said:

The main problem with Steam is that they take 30% right off the top.   Then add whatever royalty DTG wants/expects.

Here's another issue, for us, the biggest:  We are used to freedom.  The freedom to build what we want, how we want, when we want, using whatever tools and resources we want.  WE DECIDE.  Now, it's sounding like we'd have to get inside a box.  Not sure I like that idea very much.  Once you've had a taste of freedom... Real freedom... You want more or, at the least, to keep what you have.   We've had real freedom for the past 8 years.  Choice.  Unlimited.

Speaking for myself only, of course. 

I have my eyes on several products in your pipeline, King Air 350i, MU-2 Solitaire, Lear 60XR, ATR72-600, to mention ones. While the idea of running them on a 32-bit platform made me puzzled and skeptical so far, all of them being predictably high-demanding on resources, I would not hesitate to buy them on day 1 if they will ever be released for a 64-bit simulator, preferably from your site. When I really want an addon, I tend to buy from the developer's site for a long list of reasons.

Now, I don't want to open a can of worms here, but the reason why I never walked the P3D path so far is, among the others, that I am not ready to spend $200 more or less each year for every new version (and no, since I do not qualify for the Academic version, that was never an option for me, no matter what others do). Lockheed Martin has their own business model. It works and has created a loyal user base. Point is, the burden of the continuous development is put on the end user's shoulders entirely. DTG uses a different business approach, where such burden is put in part on the developer's side. Both models have pros and cons and I understand your concerns when it comes to the DTG model. Yet, I think you should simply move on and accept the fact that FSX was an exception and an abnormality. As I explained in a previous post, for many years it created an illusion of 'freedom' and 'open structure', while in fact it was simply a virtually dead platform with no further developments and no support. Yes, a lot of freedom and virtually no limitations on the developer's side, a very modest investment for the flight sim with a full plate of high-quality addons to choose from on the user's side. Unquestionably a lot of benefits. But the price both users and developers had to pay for this was sticking to an obsolete eleven year old 32-bit platform which ultimately and inevitably limited both the development and, most of all, the end user experience. 

Whatever your final decision will be, things will move on, in a way or another. And in part they did move on already. Like it or not, a significant part of the former FSX/P3D user base already switched to X-Plane 11 lately, while others have their eyes on the recent Aerofly FS2 developments and others ended up considering military platforms like DCS just for their unquestionably more advanced graphic engine. As usual, whenever things change, we are required to make hard decisions. While I understand your hesitation, I strongly encourage you to move on and not to remain stuck to a short-sighted view.

My two cents as Milviz user, which could turn into several tens dollars in the future, depending on your decision.

I think barrel explained perfectly my point of view.

Yes, developers were used to my freedom, but that was because Microsoft pulled out. They also enjoyed a stable not changing platform for over 10 years, and an easy porting from FSX to P3D of their older addons. And this will probably continue in a way with FSW.
But what would happen if the sim platform changed completely? A new platform that had no roots into the FSX/P3D engine. A new platform you would actually have to start from 0 because a good chunk of the know how you have built in the last decade woudn't apply anymore? Well, that is really the difference between a successful company and one that will struggle to adapt.

Even with FSW, the same happens even if it's on a smaller scale. Adapt to the new market or stay in the current one (provided it will continue to exist)

Edited May 18, 20179 yr by france89
typos