'Complete' EA Module Major News Source

[Horns]

It would be great if customers could look in one place and know that all major news for a given module - such as a product reaching a different point in its life cycle, or updates to the timetable for that happening - would be covered there. As it stands, news from devs can come from any one of several disparate sources (eg Official News, other posts in this forum, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Discord etc), so there is no way of staying reliably informed regarding a module a user has purchased (or intends to). Even major events (like the announcement of delays of preorders hitting Early Access) with modules aren't always reported in the Official News - which is understandable, since it's mainly a promotional newsletter - so it's tough to know where else to turn. Situations like the delay of the F-15E reaching EA being announced in the closing moments of a video are understandable, but nevertheless a source of frustration for customers who try to stay informed but feel like it winds up being a matter of guesswork (eg thinking to check the devs' YouTube at the right time).

A further aspect of the existing problem is that it can affect exercising consumer rights like claiming refunds and complicate a developer's calculation of future liabilities. For instance, some time ago a module was moved out of EA to 'release' state with no announcement in the Official News. A developer has a right to expect that refund claims due to missing features from customers who bought in prior to release would be submitted fairly promptly when this happened, since this is the point in the product lifecycle at which a user could make a purchase and receive the module as described in the product description immediately (save for features labeled otherwise). If a user is unaware that the module in question has reached release state, they can't know that the time to make such claims has arrived, leading to long delays in refunds being claimed and complicating the bookkeeping for that module.

The relative merits of the example aren't important, and one can argue about what a DCS EA module consumer is entitled to, given that we buy in knowing everything is subject to change. The point is that important events like the product reaching a different point in its life cycle need to be announced in a consistent way that allows a consumer to stay reliably informed for a variety of reasons.

Since we already have the Weekly News, the easy answer might be to include all major news, good and bad, in each edition. However, if EA would prefer to keep the Weekly News free of negativity to avoid stealing the oxygen from new module announcements and such, maybe a Module News could be established for all announcements related to modules entering preorder or later in their lifecycle, even if some articles end up being a cut and paste from one to the other. Alternatively, each developer could nominate a particular source for people to watch, if they are inclined to combine news with other content (eg blog posts or promo videos). Maybe developers could even go further and suggest that their chosen source is the best for interacting with their staff, (possibly) allowing staff time spent addressing queries to be optimized.

For the record, I am only suggesting that the *sources* of news for customers be consolidated, with a view to major news (like the examples given) being consistently provided in a nominated way. I'm not asking for a commitment to report events that aren't usually reported at present. This shouldn't mean a large difference in dev time spent on such announcements (since these are generally made already), and it means people who make "but what's the current state of this module?" posts can be easily referred to the source of current and future news, rather than getting a third party rendition of the current situation.

I'll leave it to the rest of you to judge the value of this.