Some third party developers are out of their minds!

[kiki 89]

12 minutes ago, reignman40 said:

I still don't see what this has to do with MS/Asobo. Is this even on the marketplace?? Payware has been around for quite awhile now, people will sell what they want to sell....

Some do sell (or try to sell) what they want, yes.

Still there are people who offer their products as freeware. Boy, I do respect these guys. You really are true hobbyists and part of this community!

[ARCO 245]

In every transaction there are always at least a buyer and a seller, both have responsibilities... and both can make mistakes. But we tend, more and more, to also target the agent, the middle-man who has to check whether the proposed transaction is valid, legally and commercially. From Asobo to Microsoft and now Simmarket, would-be consumers want a culprit, this is what this thread attempts to achieve, find someone to hang, virtually, after an immersion in tar and feathers like in the good old times...

The fact that a payware developer piggy-back his product on a freeware is not new in flight-simulation. I remember a certain product (extinct since FSX, sold by Aerosoft) proposing ground services through the purchase of credits for sets of airports, including some freeware! The payware developer's reply to a customer who was offended by his practice, was: "The choice to release that airport for free is the developer's, the choice to make my product available for his airport for a fee is mine, the choice to buy or not, is yours!"... Do we need more explanation?

I saw a couple of days back that FS2Crew will release a version of its product for the A320 FBW. For free?

[steve310002 1,198]

Sim Market is getting so bloated with nonsense and suspect addons that I find it increasingly hard to find actual 'real' and quality addons.

I used to enjoy looking at the sales section and now its just full of cheaply made addons or Illuminators stuff (that's being polite), so much so that it becomes difficult to even find the one or two decent addons that are on sale.

People like myself will stop buying from there because of such addons.

Edited May 1, 2021 by steve310002

[omarsmak30 4,068]

23 minutes ago, Jean-Claude said:

In every transaction there are always at least a buyer and a seller, both have responsibilities... and both can make mistakes. But we tend, more and more, to also target the agent, the middle-man who has to check whether the proposed transaction is valid, legally and commercially. From Asobo to Microsoft and now Simmarket, would-be consumers want a culprit, this is what this thread attempts to achieve, find someone to hang, virtually, after an immersion in tar and feathers like in the good old times...

Well, for me, it Simmarket responsibility to ensure what is being sold there, anyone can sell any garbage for any amount of money but then the agent's job here is to ensure that doesn't happen and the product meet certain standard, otherwise this will hurt the authenticity of the shop and refrain many from buying from that shop (including myself, especially after all these rub off products from Google Maps in Simmarket shop). But that us here are aware, I bet there are many, especially those new comers whom have no idea about the add-ones ecosystem in flight sim and will fall victim for these nonsense add-ones.

 

23 minutes ago, Jean-Claude said:

I saw a couple of days back that FS2Crew will release a version of its product for the A320 FBW. For free?

I don't get it, what does FS2Crew has to do with FBW being free or not? They are releasing complementary product that has nothing to modify in the original mod and users are free to get it or not.

 

Back to the mod, here we go now, the actual fix for the rudder is being added by the awesome FBW team (the awesome flight model guy @Donstim) and theoretically that nonsense add-one will collide with the mod 😄 : 

https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx/pull/4666 

Edited May 1, 2021 by omarsmak30

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

9 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

Sim Market is getting so bloated with nonsense and suspect addons that I find it increasingly hard to find actual 'real' and quality addons.

The # of airports still easily drown out the small amount of junk, but I don't disagree some of that stuff should not have been allowed to be on there. The MS Store is also being a little too liberal with the quality of some of the airports released by a couple developers that have been flooding the store with questionable quality of too many different airports.

As far as the FBW mod, if someone were really to improve upon it, it might be ok (it's a gray area at best though). However, given the specific seller who is releasing it, we know it's just a big scam, then yah that's not ok in this case. I'm not saying if someone did improve upon it, it would be right to try to sell it either (I dont know), but at least if it were a real improvement, then it wouldn't be a total scam.

 

Edited May 1, 2021 by Alpine Scenery

[Gilandred 690]

1 hour ago, omarsmak30 said:

Well, for me, it Simmarket responsibility to ensure what is being sold there, anyone can sell any garbage for any amount of money but then the agent's job here is to ensure that doesn't happen and the product meet certain standard

And therein lies the problem.  Who sets the standard, and on what basis?  As the saying goes, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

2 minutes ago, Gilandred said:

And therein lies the problem.  Who sets the standard, and on what basis?  As the saying goes, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

Yah, but at some point an old dead fish smells so bad even the bravest soul wouldn't dare eat it.

[Gilandred 690]

4 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

Yah, but at some point an old dead fish smells so bad even the bravest soul wouldn't dare eat it.

I’d rather a legit user rating system than a marketplace censor.  There’s certain vendors in the X Plane ecosystem that I would NOT want deciding on which products to sell me.

Edited May 1, 2021 by Gilandred

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

Just now, Gilandred said:

I’d rather a legit user rating system than a marketplace censor.

I hear you, but some unfortunate souls might still end up buying into it, so I'm not sure what that would accomplish.

[Gilandred 690]

1 minute ago, Alpine Scenery said:

I hear you, but some unfortunate souls might still end up buying into it, so I'm not sure what that would accomplish.

And to that I would say caveat emptor.  A core principle of a free market.

[robert young 2,897]

That suspension "product" appears to be a quick tweak to a couple of cfg files. It's the sort of thing countless freeware modders have done for many years. Looking at the pictures I'm guessing this was a couple of hours work. The average complete aircraft or substantial overhaul of an existing one can take from weeks to months to a year or two. I really do think vendors should stop shoving any old product on their virtual shelves before assessing whether the customer is getting something worthwhile.

Some third party sellers only need to post three or so products up to earn what one developer will earn from one product that took over a year to produce. It takes about 20 minutes to post a product on a re-seller's website. But many re-sellers post hundreds of products. It's all about total sales. While they do have a large bandwidth bill and probably a few support staff, 30% commission on hundreds of products is a lot of income. 

[Tuskin38 6,525]

12 hours ago, hangar said:

Having one soul owner of both the official forum of a game AND it's official store is a clear conflict of interest and a horrible idea as far as consumer rights is concerned but I never said it was illegal, did I?

If a person can't see why this poses such an obvious conflict then there is no point of discussion with that person. 

Did you even read what you quoted?

[hangar 661]

4 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

Well, for me, it Simmarket responsibility to ensure what is being sold there, anyone can sell any garbage for any amount of money but then the agent's job here is to ensure that doesn't happen and the product meet certain standard, otherwise this will hurt the authenticity of the shop and refrain many from buying from that shop

100% agreed. All that store owner cares about is total sales.

But to be fair it's likely, at least partly, to be our own fault since gamers in general are known for being masochists' and are notorious for rebuying from the same companies they complain about over and over. It's a weird phenomena.

[hangar 661]

9 hours ago, Janov said:

I am not sure where the comprehension problem on your side comes from, but I will gladly repeat:

Both X-Plane.org and X-Aviation.com are NOT the official stores of X-Plane. There is no official store of X-Plane.

Jan

 

Hi Jan, I understand the legalities, but that is not the point I've been trying to make.

The point here is NOT that Austin Meyers does not legally own a forum or store...that has no bearing on my general point, which is (to be less generalized since some have misunderstood me)...

The "Org" store is the legal publisher for many of the X-plane products (they're NOT just a store, they have exclusive legal rights over the product developers to market the products) , which means they have a financial interest in the success and/or failure of those products. That same "Org" store also owns the "Org" forums where the vast majority of X-plane consumer traffic is found for both support, troubleshooting, communicating with their fellow gamers, etc. You have a very similar situation going on with the other very popular store for xplane products over at the X-aviation forum/store (owned by same person).

So what I've been trying to say is that this situation of where the store owners have exclusive publishing rights and a higher interest in the success/failure of those products and then also own the forums (which draw the vast majority of traffic/users for that game) ends up in many cases being a conundrum for many x-plane users who often get treated unfairly and unprofessionally and may be left with nowhere to turn in case of an issue since the 2 forum owners also own the 2 stores who are also financially vested in the success or failure of those products to a much higher degree than a just a "store" typically would, hence the bullying/censorship/banned accounts and other types of unfair & unprofessional treatment that some have had to deal with there.

This was the point I was trying to put across earlier. There's nothing I've made up about any of this and as I said one is free to research the complaints themselves which can be found in various places across the internet (and even the BBB).

You won't find any BBB complaints against very popular forums/sites such as Avsim, Flightsim.com, Simflight.com which are all very old domains in this hobby...yet you WILL find them for the X-plane.org forum and the reason is because those forums have a vested financial interest in the products people are buying...not a good thing for consumer rights, which is all I'm saying here.

Edited May 1, 2021 by hangar

[harrry 322]

If I buy something from Wallmart Or Target ir Sainsberry it is they that I go to for problems but it seems that Simmsrt or Aeorosoft etc invent their own brand of responsibility.