What if ED went bankrupt oder not supporting DCS anymore?

[Maberickxx88]

Just thinking,

what will be in this case? Will i still able to Play with my modules? Or let´s say in 10 years they decide to abandon DCS.

I bought licenses for over 2000€. Just curious.

[nooneyouknow]

This is actually a very good question. Unfortunately, it's one nobody wants to ask

Stuff happens, things change. 2k is a fair investment in entertainment software. Would that investment be "in the wind", up in flames, etc?

[draconus]

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/license/

#10 might interest you. If ED goes down you'd have to seek help in Switzerland court law.

[Rudel_chw]

On 12/26/2022 at 7:29 PM, Maberickxx88 said:

Will i still able to Play with my modules?

It depends, if there is a pre-warning then you could enable off-line mode and keep playing for a pretty long while (until you change hardware on your pc or reinstall windows). If there is no warning, you would not be able to start dcs anymore.

[Rick50]

 

Well... this DCS has many skilled mod makers, many official dev coders, and many internal employees. I suspect that someone might enable DCS to continue on without the company. At least until hardware no longer supported the code. Updating core engine for new hardware and new drivers... dunno, seems unlikely, but stranger things have occurred.

It's possible the company might treat it as "abandonware", meaning let people continue to use it, just no more efforts by the defunct company to keep it updated.

Another consideration is that if the company fell on hard times, it may get bought. Perhaps by a giant evil game publisher. Perhaps by a good game publisher. Or perhaps by a rich individual who can afford to buy it and just let it continue! No,  I don't have that kind of money, nor am I aware of anyone like that. But I do remember that the star of a TV comedy show told an interviewer that he was really into DCS for a couple of years and had put a lot of money into it. No, he wouldn't have enough to buy DCS/ED either, but someone a bit like him, someone with mountains of money, totally anonymous as being that rich, might just say "yea, X millions? Sure I'll buy it, keep the doors open, keep the devs working". It's not "highly probable", but I do think it's maybe moderately "possible".

Real world example: "The Expanse" was a great scifi TV show, made after a great book series. One studio made 3 seasons and abruptly decided they weren't gonna finish it, just abandon. Not enough profit or something, cable TV execs have strange alien thought process sometimes. Before it became a problem, Bezos sent his streaming people to try and secure the show to finish the series and did... and the transition was seamless, many might have been unaware of a change in paymasters!

It's also possible that the independent devs might band together and buy the company or DCS product. Or it could be bought by the giant flight guys over in Redmond Washington... and merge the two possibly?

Edited May 7, 2023 by Rick50

[Dangerzone]

Only ED can answer this topic. I would hope however that if this ever did unfortunately ever occur, that ED would release some sort of last build or similar that turned off the licensing check to just allow people to install and play bypassing the registration checks, but that’s hope, no guarantee. 
 

The simple fact is, when you buy licensed software that requires activation, you never truly owned the software or have rights to it. There is always a risk, whether Adobe Photoshop or now even Microsoft Windows considering calls home periodicly to check whether or not you’re operating system should still be activated all these have the potential to disappear on us.  Or even be “turned off “if they deem the region, we living or our conduct is no longer within their terms and conditions. 

Edited May 7, 2023 by Dangerzone

[Rick50]

Good point: all bets are off once the lawyers get involved!!

 

 

[NineLine]

I sort of think this was talked about one time before, what would happen if it all fell apart, the short answer was your stuff would be fine in that you would still be able to access it. Or we would do our very best to make sure that was the case. That said we are very very healthy right now and continuing to grow and get stronger, while nothing is for sure in this crazy world, this should not be one of those things taking up any brain power to worry about.