From their website news:

"

• Premium: We have heard your calls for an optional premium membership without ads and long waiting times and are already working on implementing this."

 

I do not critizise this and they have it well deserved to make some money (for a hopefully reasonable price for us).

But I find it always "funny" if first download speeds will be throttled and ads would be placed to offer some month later ad free and fast premium membership. I doubt that there where many "calls for a premium membership" 😉

I hate marketing speech, maybe that is it then.

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by guenseli

4 minutes ago, guenseli said:

From their website news:

"

• Premium: We have heard your calls for an optional premium membership without ads and long waiting times and are already working on implementing this."

 

I do not critizise this and they have it well deserved to make some money (for a hopefully reasonable price for us).

But I find it always "funny" if first download speeds will be throttled and ads would be placed to offer some month later ad free and fast premium membership. I doubt that there where many "calls for a premium membership" 😉

I hate marketing speech, maybe that is it then.

Eh, I think this is a good move. They have thousands of gigs worth of content and there's SO much new stuff added every day. They have to pay for all that somehow and normal ads may not cover everything. With their future support of XP12 stuff I think a "premium" membership makes even more sense. I will happily enroll when available! 

Might be the beginning of the end, unless they can still find a way to keep the free bit going without being too tedious 

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by dogmanbird

Nexus Mods seem to be successful with this model. They even have some FS2020 stuff: Microsoft Flight Simulator Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)

13 minutes ago, guenseli said:

From their website news:

"

• Premium: We have heard your calls for an optional premium membership without ads and long waiting times and are already working on implementing this."

 

I do not critizise this and they have it well deserved to make some money (for a hopefully reasonable price for us).

But I find it always "funny" if first download speeds will be throttled and ads would be placed to offer some month later ad free and fast premium membership. I doubt that there where many "calls for a premium membership" 😉

I hate marketing speech, maybe that is it then.

They have to pay for the hosting and the bandwidth, what do you expect?

Nothing is free, unless it can rely on ads AND a huge userbase, which a flight simulator addons website will never have.

Personally I welcome this, it's better than nothing. Why nothing? Because if they fail and shut down the website, everything is lost.

5 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

They have to pay for the hosting and the bandwidth, what do you expect?

 

That was not my point

I love the "we have heard your calls...". Since when people are calling for paying, seriously ?

19 minutes ago, Seven7 said:

I love the "we have heard your calls...". Since when people are calling for paying, seriously ?

Yes, this one made me smile too 😁

Cheers,

2Low2Slow

21 minutes ago, Seven7 said:

I love the "we have heard your calls...". Since when people are calling for paying, seriously ?

 

THAT was my point, thanks

21 minutes ago, Seven7 said:

I love the "we have heard your calls...". Since when people are calling for paying, seriously ?

There has been tons of requests for a premium service that allows fast downloads. 

So the next question is, how much do you think people will pay?

Considering I spend about £100 per month on aircraft and scenery, I wouldn't mind something like £5 a month; it would be good value for the downloads I have had.

With bandwidth, they need to look at limiting the frequency of some of the updates. 
I have seen large file sizes, some of them gigabytes, get updated quite frequently, and it must take its toll, as people go back and grab it all over again.

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by bobcat999

Also, people forget that Flightsim.to has much more than just downloads, they have forums, dev resources and a lot of other stuff - none of which is free to support. 

31 minutes ago, Seven7 said:

Since when people are calling for paying, seriously ?

As a heavy, heavy fs.to user, I would happily pay a couple bucks a month for high-speed downloads with minimal waiting.  I know the expense of running a popular site like that from my professional life, and I'd hate to see the single best addons site I've used in several decades of flight simming go under because the biggest consumers weren't willing to pay a little for it.

The NexusMods comparison is very apt, and proof the system can work.

16 minutes ago, espent said:

There has been tons of requests for a premium service that allows fast downloads. 

MS may go down this route for MSFS users some time in future faster loading for game pass members.

No need to download MSFS instant access to online play.

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by G-RFRY

trainsim.com did this years ago for premium downloads as well I believe