37 minutes ago, DAD said:

You can. If the sim would not run or even install on my below minimum specs. Fine. Would have requested a refund and all fine. Not stressing semantics but minimum is not mandatory. Forza Horizon had that on my system, refusing to run.  And with just minimum requirements I don’t expect no 4k resolution at 40 FPS on ultra
 

If the sim runs with 20 FPS on mixed medium/high settings in the FBW AND the CRJ release version as well then a sudden change in the marketplace encryption rendering the DLC useless then I would be willing to accept it if and only if MS finally granted my refund. To then buy the CRJ from AS directly…

It's a give and take. Everyone can accept that the sim may run even though you are below the minimum specs but you can't then blame the developer when the time comes to implement an instruction set later on in the development roadmap that is now needed and applicable.

I agree that with MS knowing what the minimum specs are everyone would have been better served with a tool that runs and pops up with a disclaimer or stop install command if you are below specs to avoid this situation but at the moment it kinda is what it is and at the end of the day the information was posted months before release and it needed to be respected.

 

I sympathize and hope a workable solution for you is found. However I just can't see this specific issue being one that is MS or the marketplace fault unfortunately.

Edited June 23, 20214 yr by Maxis

if they want me to buy on the store, they should make that more attractive, no encryption and faster patches.

the first, i have had to change some stuff in a config file, not possible when its encrypted, 2nd where the heck is my update

for the stearman there, its long out.

so no way for now.

 

It's a really bad economic model to produce an item of software, or sim, or game and then rely just on third party addon commission to bolster your survival. By all means if you add value by creating IN-HOUSE addons, or even commission them, that might be a reasonable thing to do. But sales of core sims ought to rely on one thing and one thing alone in principle: It is good enough and polished enough to promote sales all by itself.

Let's suppose for a moment that you think it is fair to charge commission on other people's work - and it actually is fair if the commission is reasonable. Is 30% reasonable? Is 54% combined commission reasonable? Of course not. This has echoes of Dovetail and their disastrously selfish economic model with FSX-SE, which directly resulted not only in hundreds of developers offloading their remaindered, sub-standard, obsolete addons which sold for peanuts as far as the customer was concerned, but by the time Dovetail and Steam had taken their cut, there was virtually nothing left, it also resulted in the end of Dovetail's development of sim titles.  Almost no 3rd party developers made any significant cash from this miserable economic structure, and as we know, in the end it proved the end for Dovetail and flight sims, partly because of their greed, and partly because they had simply no idea of the enormous task of creating a decent sim with all its complexities.

If you need to start over-relying on commission from 3rd parties you are showing little faith in core sales of your own product. If MSFS was reasonably bug free and was more polished, by all means double the price and even charge extra for the regional packs (Japan, Europe etc). If it all ran perfectly well and was vaguely finished, then I doubt many would object. But that is not the case. Furthermore there are already signs that the avalanche of "approved" addons seem to gain approval for any reason OTHER than any kind of quality control. These approvals seem to be more geared to an unquestioning acceptance of the marketing regime to which 3rd parties agree.

I think it's fair enough of both MS and Steam to charge some kind of cut for their trouble in posting items for sale (that is essentially ALL they are doing). But when you start swiping more than 15% of the hard work of others merely for placing for sale their work on your website, you start getting a lot of resentment building up. This is indeed happening with Steam. 35% is an OUTRAGEOUS cut for posting a product on a portal. I get that Steam does a bit more than merely placing the product, but you have to understand that their economies of scale are also enormous. The cost to it per item that Steam posts is absolutely tiny compared with the enormous accumulated commission revenue.

The same applies to many sim addon re-sellers who only need to post just over 3 separate products (which takes less than an hour's work) to earn more than the 3 combined developers who have spent not an hour making their products but often well over a year each (3 years total). Compare 3 year's work with one hour's work and you begin to understand the grossly excessive commission structure. I get that these re-sellers have expenses to pay, websites to run and sales to administer, but none of that even approaches the energy, time consumption, expense and skill in producing one decent addon.

As with many economic paradigms that on the face of it appear healthy "capitalism", in fact what's happening is one major product relying more on 3rd party addons to bolster it than assurance of sales due to its own quality. That would be similar to a car manufacturer producing a new model then relying on commission from future sales of tires that happen to be fitted to its car in the future.

The saviour in all this, so far, as been the appearance of quite extraordinary high quality free or donationware addons that exist outside of this paradigm. In that regard I am a convert to this kind of endeavour. There are some "free" addons that are every bit as good quality as many 3rd party commercial products and in many cases they are frankly better.

I'm retired now so I can say what I wish. There will be many marketplace 3rd party producers who are pretending to enthuse about the set up but I am absolutely certain many of them feel trapped in someone else's bubble. Of course they will never say so publicly.

 

Edited June 23, 20214 yr by robert young

I buy off the marketplace if it's available there if not I go elsewhere.  It is getting to be a pain to update all my assets

Robert has updated the figures in his thread, from sound of it ASOBO is taking a smaller cut (didn't specify what) and, if FS keeps selling like it is, Steam's cut will automatically reduce.

The combination takes the total cut to a more reasonable 36% from 54%.

G

51 minutes ago, robert young said:

It's a really bad economic model to produce an item of software, or sim, or game and then rely just on third party addon commission to bolster your survival. By all means if you add value by creating IN-HOUSE addons, or even commission them, that might be a reasonable thing to do. But sales of core sims ought to rely on one thing and one thing alone in principle: It is good enough and polished enough to promote sales all by itself.

Let's suppose for a moment that you think it is fair to charge commission on other people's work - and it actually is fair if the commission is reasonable. Is 30% reasonable? Is 54% combined commission reasonable? Of course not. This has echoes of Dovetail and their disastrously selfish economic model with FSX-SE, which directly resulted not only in hundreds of developers offloading their remaindered, sub-standard, obsolete addons which sold for peanuts as far as the customer was concerned, but by the time Dovetail and Steam had taken their cut, there was virtually nothing left, it also resulted in the end of Dovetail's development of sim titles.  Almost no 3rd party developers made any significant cash from this miserable economic structure, and as we know, in the end it proved the end for Dovetail and flight sims, partly because of their greed, and partly because they had simply no idea of the enormous task of creating a decent sim with all its complexities.

If you need to start over-relying on commission from 3rd parties you are showing little faith in core sales of your own product. If MSFS was reasonably bug free and was more polished, by all means double the price and even charge extra for the regional packs (Japan, Europe etc). If it all ran perfectly well and was vaguely finished, then I doubt many would object. But that is not the case. Furthermore there are already signs that the avalanche of "approved" addons seem to gain approval for any reason OTHER than any kind of quality control. These approvals seem to be more geared to an unquestioning acceptance of the marketing regime to which 3rd parties agree.

I think it's fair enough of both MS and Steam to charge some kind of cut for their trouble in posting items for sale (that is essentially ALL they are doing). But when you start swiping more than 15% of the hard work of others merely for placing for sale their work on your website, you start getting a lot of resentment building up. This is indeed happening with Steam. 35% is an OUTRAGEOUS cut for posting a product on a portal. I get that Steam does a bit more than merely placing the product, but you have to understand that their economies of scale are also enormous. The cost to it per item that Steam posts is absolutely tiny compared with the enormous accumulated commission revenue.

The same applies to many sim addon re-sellers who only need to post just over 3 separate products (which takes less than an hour's work) to earn more than the 3 combined developers who have spent not an hour making their products but often well over a year each (3 years total). Compare 3 year's work with one hour's work and you begin to understand the grossly excessive commission structure. I get that these re-sellers have expenses to pay, websites to run and sales to administer, but none of that even approaches the energy, time consumption, expense and skill in producing one decent addon.

As with many economic paradigms that on the face of it appear healthy "capitalism", in fact what's happening is one major product relying more on 3rd party addons to bolster it than assurance of sales due to its own quality. That would be similar to a car manufacturer producing a new model then relying on commission from future sales of tires that happen to be fitted to its car in the future.

The saviour in all this, so far, as been the appearance of quite extraordinary high quality free or donationware addons that exist outside of this paradigm. In that regard I am a convert to this kind of endeavour. There are some "free" addons that are every bit as good quality as many 3rd party commercial products and in many cases they are frankly better.

I'm retired now so I can say what I wish. There will be many marketplace 3rd party producers who are pretending to enthuse about the set up but I am absolutely certain many of them feel trapped in someone else's bubble. Of course they will never say so publicly.

 

Do not forget 54 % + tax office is also in for their commissions 

 

 

The times where games relied on sales of the main product itself are long over. I think MS' business plan is marketplace + paid DLC.

Edited June 23, 20214 yr by tweekz

2 hours ago, tweekz said:

The times where games relied on sales of the main product itself are long over. I think MS' business plan is marketplace + paid DLC.

I did effectively mention DLC as a reasonable addition. That's very different from taking a large commission on someone else's work.

7 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

This is a huge issue, the Iris-Jabiru update was delayed for months on the marketplace, and it suffered from the flaps error that needed the update to correct. So much so, that one user stated that he purchased a second copy from the Devs store just to get the fixed version.

 

 

By all accounts MS suddenly changed their requirements for marketplace items (or suddenly enforced a requirement they had previously ignored and had not told anyone about? who knows)  so you had this weird situation where features that appeared in the then current version of the Jabiru (which was still on sale on the marketplace with the "bad" features in place) were not acceptable for the update version that was submitted.  This was compounded when the dev (who is apparently a one man operation) was unable, for major personal reasons, to work on it for quite some time.

It is well known that MS have restrictions on the marketplace content, For example the Military aircraft cannot have weapons. The G91 for example drops bombs in the non-marketplace variants but they are removed in the marketplace version.  That is understood. But in the case of the Jabiru, features that were perfectly fine in the existing versions still on sale suddenly and apparently randomly stopped the update from being available.

Interestingly no-one on the MS forums got upset with Asobo for this seemingly random refusal to post the update they all just abused the developer (who had major real life issues going on) instead.

Edited June 24, 20214 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

6 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

MSFS has enlarged the entire home consumer flight sim market!  Don't you know this?

of course i know that

yet do not guarantee that marketplace is the top seller shop around or it might be for some devs and not for some others; do not forget many new simmers are freeware addicts and will stay freeware addicts.

 

40 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

 

By all accounts MS suddenly changed their requirements for marketplace items (or suddenly enforced a requirement they had previously ignored and had not told anyone about? who knows)  so you had this weird situation where features that appeared in the then current version of the Jabiru (which was still on sale on the marketplace with the "bad" features in place) were not acceptable for the update version that was submitted.  This was compounded when the dev (who is apparently a one man operation) was unable, for major personal reasons, to work on it for quite some time.

It is well known that MS have restrictions on the marketplace content, For example the Military aircraft cannot have weapons. The G91 for example drops bombs in the non-marketplace variants but they are removed in the marketplace version.  That is understood. But in the case of the Jabiru, features that were perfectly fine in the existing versions still on sale suddenly and apparently randomly stopped the update from being available.

Interestingly no-one on the MS forums got upset with Asobo for this seemingly random refusal to post the update they all just abused the developer (who had major real life issues going on) instead.

As I stated, the Jabiru version on the marketplace had the flaps issue that required the update to fix the issue. All other stores got the update with the Marketplace being months behind. Excuses do not erase these facts. It was not a weird situation, just an extremely late update with both Dev and Asobo to blame.

"Interestingly no-one on the MS forums got upset with Asobo"

If Asobo gave a sim update to steam users, and then waited for 2 or 3 months to give that same sim update to the Marketplace users, surely folk would be upset with Asobo. The blame for the Jabiru issue was properly put on the Developer who should have been able to get the the update on the Marketplace. Asobo should have banned the Dev from selling the the broken version on the Marketplace and ensured that all Devs make timely updates to the store.

Plain and simple...

 

 

 

5 hours ago, robert young said:

By all means if you add value by creating IN-HOUSE addons, or even commission them, that might be a reasonable thing to do.

They have already confirmed that they will be doing this.

31 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

 

If Asobo gave a sim update to steam users, and then waited for 2 or 3 months to give that same sim update to the Marketplace users, surely folk would be upset with Asobo. The blame for the Jabiru issue was properly put on the Developer who should have been able to get the the update on the Marketplace. Asobo should have banned the Dev from selling the the broken version on the Marketplace and ensured that all Devs make timely updates to the store.

Plain and simple...

It is generally not the devs that are the issue. By all accounts devs regularly have to jump through hoops with updates to meet the MS marketplace requirements,  and MS are slow in responding and approving,  and even once approved it is at least a week before MS get the updates into the game.

Now having standards is a good thing. There are other online stores we need not mention here that publish everything submitted, even pirated rubbish, on the basis that they are just a storefront and it is not their job to check what is being sold.  I approve of the marketplace being a curated store they just need to keep the devs more informed of exact requirements and any changes,  and respond quicker when approving or rejecting submissions and updates.

As for the Jabiru - the dev sent an update to MS that met all the current MS requirements however MS got back to them a week or two later and said they had some issues. The dev sent a revised version of the update fixing al lthe issues pointed oot by MS, but a week or two later MS got back and apparently had moved the goal post without telling anyone and decided to now reject features in the update that Asobo previously had been fine with.

The dev then announced he was unable to work on the new third version of a fix to the update as his wife had suddenly been hospitalised and presumably he was not even home to access the files ( Iris seem to be pretty much a one man operation fitted in between a day job and family commitments) .

At this point there was a heap of abusive (now deleted) posts saying "we paid money for this aircraft and do not care about your personal life just fix it" which basically resulted in the dev disappearing from the MSFS forums temporarily presumably because any time he tried to post anything he just got abused. Which is unfortunate as he was previously very responsive and went out of his way to take on board constructive criticism of the product and work towards resolving issues.

I think part of the reason people tend to blame the devs for every issue is that getting angry with MS for delays is going to imply that they made a bad decision using the MS marketplace in the first place 😄

 

Edited June 24, 20214 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

8 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Because you alone represent the entire home consumer flight sim market.  LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

And you take it on yourself to take a valid comment someone else puts forth and find a way to totally misrepresent it.  SOY!

11 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

It is generally not the devs that are the issue. By all accounts devs regularly have to jump through hoops with updates to meet the MS marketplace requirements,  and MS are slow in responding and approving,  and even once approved it is at least a week before MS get the updates into the game.

 

at least a week vs almost 3 months are two different stories...

13 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

As for the Jabiru - the dev sent an update to MS that met all the current MS requirements however MS got back to them a week or two later and said they had some issues. The dev sent a revised version of the update fixing al lthe issues pointed oot by MS, but a week or two later MS got back and apparently had moved the goal post without telling anyone and decided to now reject features in the update that Asobo previously had been fine with.

 

The thread clearly shows that the Dev failed 2x at getting the approval prior to the sob story.

14 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

The dev then announced he was unable to work on the new third version of a fix to the update as his wife had suddenly been hospitalised and presumably he was not even home to access the files ( Iris seem to be pretty much a one man operation fitted in between a day job and family commitments) .

At this point there was a heap of abusive (now deleted) posts saying "we paid money for this aircraft and do not care about your personal life just fix it" which basically resulted in the dev disappearing from the MSFS forums temporarily presumably because any time he tried to post anything he just got abused. Which is unfortunate as he was previously very responsive and went out of his way to take on board constructive criticism of the product and work towards resolving issues.

Not an accurate account of what folk said...

There was a general disappointment about the Devs lack of attention to  MSFS users. Other aircraft Devs were able to get their updates approved.

And even after the sob story, the Dev claimed he would need at least another week...that turned into over a month...no excuse for that.

19 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

I think part of the reason people tend to blame the devs for every issue is that getting angry with MS for delays is going to imply that they made a bad decision using the MS marketplace in the first place 😄

I was not talking about every issue, just one where a Dev (and apparently you also) thought that it was acceptable to make MSFS Marketplace users wait almost 3 months for an update, all the while selling a broken version on the store to keep the revenue coming.