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Author Topic: Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement  (Read 7032 times)

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Offline Asid

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Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
« on: April 23, 2018, 02:05:40 PM »


Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
DTG Cryss, Today at 12:20 PM



It is with great sadness that we announce the future closure of Flight Sim World.

As you know, we always had a strong ambition to bring a new experience into the established world of flight simulation, one that deliberately overhauled both the flying experience and the graphical fidelity, offering new ways to fly.

Unfortunately, after many detailed discussions, we regrettably don’t see a clear direction that will allow us to keep to the development time we’d want, alongside the player numbers we need.

So, slightly before a year since we first launched into Early Access, we have made the intensely difficult decision to fully scale back all future development on Flight Sim World and remove it from sale on 24th May.

We’re sure you have lots of questions, we hope we’ve answered a few here.

FAQ
Q.    What happens to Flight Sim World if I already own it?
A .   It will remain in your Steam library, available to play in its current format.

Q.    Will the sim be taken off sale?
A.    Yes, and we’re working to the date of 24th May 2018. We want to give anyone who does not yet own a copy of the sim enough time to get a copy and keep it safe in their library for future play.

Q.    What will happen to any Add-Ons?
A.    Add-Ons will also come off sale, but those you already own will still also be in your Steam library.


We hope you can give the team the respect they deserve for their tireless hard work to date. Please know that all of us here at Dovetail hold flight simulation, the creators of add-on content, and especially you, the community for this sim, in incredibly high regard for both your support and time with Flight Sim World.

- The Flight Sim World Team
     


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Offline wilso845

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Re: Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2018, 05:51:04 PM »

Thank god i didnt buy this one
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Offline Beef

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Re: Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2018, 07:12:46 PM »
Simplifies things. I hadn't bought it either. I have too much money invested in FSX and XP11 (and DCS World) to buy into another flight sim.

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Offline wilso845

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Re: Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2018, 07:29:15 PM »
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Offline Asid

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Re: Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2018, 01:46:18 PM »
Response from Robert S. Randazzo C.E.O. of PMDG
23 April at 08:29 ·

Quote
Captains,

This morning we awoke to news that Dovetail Games has taken the long expected step of pulling the plug on Flightsim World, their hard-scrabble effort to re-invigorate the flight simulation genre abandoned by Microsoft. I don't think anyone in the developer community is particularly surprised by this news, except perhaps that it took as long as it did for the inevitable to sink in.

You may recall that I took Dovetail to task eleven months ago, for what we perceived to be Dovetail's position as a dishonest broker within the long established community of developers and consumers of flight simulation.

(You can read that original post here: https://www.avsim.com/…/509763-07may17-the-sorts-of-behavi…/ )

While all of us very much wanted to see them succeed in the development effort, it had became clear that Dovetail endeavored to subsume developers like PMDG by killing off established distribution channels, ending existing developer-customer relationships and forcing all developers to become subservient to their own marketplace established using rigid constraints designed to limit competition.

The end result was predictable, if not entirely inevitable.

You see, from the very beginning, this community has thrived on the concept of individual innovation and success. The innovators of the late 1980s begat the tools and concepts that lead many of us to begin development for flight simulation in the very early 1990s, and the results of those efforts created companies like Aerosoft, Flight1, Justflight, PMDG, and scores of others that you recognize today.

Each developer and company worked hard to create new ideas, innovate new approaches and create a relationship with the customers community based on trust, openness and creativity.

Along the way, individuals have sprung up from time to time that attempted to unbalance the community through selfishness or greed, (How many of you remember the Papa Tango fiasco?) In all of those instances, the community of simmers and developers banded together to keep things moving forward, pointed in the right direction. Developers acting with the community's best interest at heart have long been supported by simmers, and the marketplace continues to expand and thrive with new entrants, new ideas and innovation.

I don't think you could find a more pure example of free market economics anywhere in the online world.

Five years ago, a group of us were involved in attempting to purchase the rights to FSX and Microsoft Flight from Microsoft with the intent to continue development for the benefit of this community. None of us had the financial strength to complete the transaction alone, so we joined together (sometimes uneasily) in order to build a marketplace in which all developers would be given a chance to grow and thrive in a living platform.

Our fledgling conglomerate was grossly out-bid by Dovetail Games in part because we just weren't well funded, but also in part because Dovetail leveraged their established, largely positive reputation along with a costly high bid. They knew from day-one that their plan was to subvert the third party development community and enforce high fees on their own distribution channel that we would all need in order to survive.

They tried to gain cooperation by assuring us that this wasn't the case, but the reality proved to be different than their promises and many of the long-standing trade names in this community (including PMDG) opted not to play along, which presented the dual problem of optics and finances.

And THIS leads me to the entire point of this post: I like this community. Very much. I like simmers, I like our customers, I like our fellow developers, even those with whom we compete. (Okay, maybe not that one that stole from us, but that is another story for another day.:ph34r:) This community, for all of it's trials and tribulations and ups and downs has a way of weeding out the bad actors, the malefactors, the thieves, the cheats and those who would do the community harm. You often don't see it, but the development community supports one another, communicates with one another, and genuinely enjoys seeing one another succeed and thrive.

So at PMDG, we don't view today's news as negative. Sure, we feel terribly for the developers who's project was just trashed, because we know what it is like to pour your heart and soul into something for years on end- but this also wasn't THEIR fault... The fault lies with whomever made the decision that all of us (simmers and developers alike) would follow a concept to certain death, simply because it was held out before us.

This proved not to be the case, however.



This, coming from a company which charges its existing customers again to go from FSX to P3D. We are talking over $100 a time. Thats the reward for loyal customers. DOUBLE DIPPING  :Wag finger
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Offline Asid

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Re: Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
« Reply #5 on: May 08, 2018, 01:10:37 PM »
Response from Chris Trott (former Aces Studio team member) to video published by

Chris contradicts quite a lot of what Froogle said. Having viewed the video I can say that Froogle did gett a few things wrong.

Chris Trott
1 week ago
"First - I have a real problem with your statements about the "money motive".  I find it utterly unbecoming of anyone who purports to be a representative of this hobby to make statements like you did accusing PEOPLE of doing something like you did (i.e. the hiring thing, the facebook posts) and assuming that the RANK AND FILE had any idea what was going on at the management levels.  From everything that's been posted by the people who now are JOBLESS because of this cancellation (which is most of the team, including the 2 that ran the media BTW), they had no clue that there was any discussion of cancelling the project until it was announced.  So, shame on you for claiming they made posts "knowing" that it was being cancelled.  They *DIDN'T*.

Also, I have a major problem with another base premise of your editorial.  Dovetail did have experience in flight simulation.  I'm sorry that you have forgotten that Dovetail was made up of many of the original ACES team that worked on both Microsoft Train Simulator AND FSX.  I'm sorry that you forgot that I reminded you of that months ago when you got it wrong the last time you went on a rant about their "lack of experience."  Microsoft picked Dovetail because they had that background experience, not just the money.  Dovetail had, among its programmers, the guys who literally wrote Simconnect from nothing.  The experience was there.

I'm not going to go into depth like I was tempted to with my end of this, but I'll summarize my feelings as such -

1) Robert Randazzo is not a "pillar" or "leader" of our community.  He doesn't deserve to be heard.  He hated DTG because they outbid him and never gave them a chance.  They approached him in good faith and he told them off.  He continues to make money because of the things DTG did to FSX to make it more stable and allow him to make addons that previously would have crashed FSX immediately and he has no respect for them at all.

2) Aerosoft are their own worst enemies.  Mathjis is one to talk since it was Aerosoft that was one of the worst offenders prior to the self-publishing revolution a decade ago with their "fees".  Flight1 and Aerosoft both took 50%+ of the sale price of an addon before the digital download revolution took hold and allowed developers to self-publish.  Aerosoft is not a DEVELOPER first, they are a PUBLISHER first.  They claimed to have their own FS in development prior to the FSX license deal.  What happened to it?  Oh yeah, they abandoned it because they wanted to bid on FSX.  Now it's gone, GSX v2 is gone (and talk about a money making scheme - GSX is one), and Aerosoft haven't released any of their promised addons on time since because they were relying on 3rd party developers with (wait for it) - NO EXPERIENCE prior in FS.

3) Carenado, ORBX, and A2A all licensed or published addons for FlightSimWorld (A2A licensed AccuFeel, ORBX licensed GlobalVector, Carenado released several FSW-specific addons).  There were those in the business who did support FSW and tried to work with DTG.  The problem was there was a lot of venom (mostly egged on by those who lost the FSX bid and put out misinformation and lies) that over-powered those trying to genuinely help.  Those who were helping Dovetail stayed silent about it because they feared the kind of vile response that DTG was getting simply for trying.

4) Dovetail was in trouble from before Flight School.  You failed to mention it (again) but Dovetail sold a substantial share in the business to a Venture Capital company a couple years ago.  Why?  Because Trainsim World, their new sim platform, was in trouble and hemorraging money.  The conversion to UT2 wasn't going as well as hoped, they needed more staff, and the money wasn't there.  As such, they pulled most of the Flight School team off (and then cancelled it) and the team that remained to work on FSW was less than 10.  It never got above 15 afterward.  How do you expect 15 people to build a program on the level of XPlane or P3D when you have less than 1/3 the workforce?  Laminar had at least 50 working on XPlane at one point (if not 100), and who knows how many Lockheed has working on P3D.  Would a less hostile environment from the community and publishers have encouraged them to put more people on it?  I don't know.  But it certainly didn't help give confidence that they would get rewarded if they did.

In the end, the reason FSW died is because of us, not Dovetail.  We allowed a hostile environment to fester within this community and didn't support it.  I see it in the comments here.  Everyone "I called it...", "I knew it wasn't going to work...", etc.  You're right - you created a self-fulfilling prophecy.  You never gave them a chance.  Don't blame Steven Hood.  Blame yourself for not supporting the guys who were actually working and trying to do something for the community that we'd been asking for. "
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Offline Beef

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Re: Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
« Reply #6 on: May 09, 2018, 03:04:40 AM »
Let me first say that I started out this reply much differently and then changed my mind and decided to just say this...I don't subscribe to froogle's channel nor watch his videos.
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