waiting for resolution RAZBAM Situation Post Archive (will be deleted)

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Citizen said:

From what I'm seeing, the Venn diagram of people willing to give DCS a pass for development instability and people willing to give ED a pass for hosting a disruptive dispute is definitely not a circle.  I cannot stress this strongly enough: this disruption is unlike any DCS has seen yet in terms of public perception.

My personal instinct is that if this gets resolved amicably, this will end up being a pretty minor blip and mostly forgotten by regular users.  If the Razbam modules die it will be a bigger deal, but I still suspect it won't be the end of DCS.  I'm sure plenty of people forecasted doom after the Hawk issue, and things are still trucking.  But I could be totally wrong

[RafaPolit]

@Citizen everything I read from you resonates with how I feel.  I wrote a very lengthy post in the other thread about, for me, this being more of "What does trust look like for the community, ED and 3rd party developers moving forward", much more than it is who will win the legal battle.  I went into lengths as to saying that most outcomes of the legal battle will most likely also hurt the community!  It already has.

Also, I agree there are two fronts here, the legal one (which will be won by the party most likely to be right or the one with more clever approaches, insight into legalities and loopholes, this is the way of the justice system and has been for centuries), and there is a public battle with how we perceive ED and it's practices, Razbam both as an individual 3rd party developer and as part of the 3rd party developer environment as a whole.  

Nineline has pointed out that the first needs to be solved before the second one, which at this point is true... but maybe, just maybe, #1 could have been avoided in the first place (difficult to say), but for sure #2 could have started even before the whole problem with RB became a public matter.

Also, I think it's the wrong approach to simply neglect including previous problems of a similar nature and claiming they are speculations.  Track records are paramount to this type of things.  As a software developer myself, if every deploy I make is bug free and then, all of a sudden, one has a minor bug... the customers will probably say: "tough luck, let's wait for it to be fixed".  If every deploy I deliver is plagued with bugs and you get a new one with yet another bug, albeit small, the community will take into account previous problems and be less prone to be OK with my capability of producing bug-free code.  If an employee is late for the first time in 3 years, it's different than if an employee has been working 2 months and has been late every single day.  So previous experiences matter.

So, it doesn't help the community's trust in ED that there are previous occurrences of payment being withheld from other developers.  And that is not speculation.  The fact that it hasn't been made official by ED does not make it speculation, and I believe this is a key difference in how the treatment of information should work.  One thing is to say: "I'm sure ED will not be able to present proof in court"... yeah, I'd be speculating.  On the other hand, the lack of an official acknowledgment about previous decisions (for whatever reasons) to withhold payment does not make certain truths speculations.

[Neil Gardner]

I am a vicar and so you might have known I would say this, but I echo the sentiment , ‘be nice to one another’. It’s a small ask but it facilitates much better discussion. Also, if you don’t know what people are thinking or planning to do, and for the most part you don’t, then always give them the benefit of the doubt. Imagine that the best of motives are in operation not the worst, be charitable and slow to attribute nefarious intentions to anyone. Most people only try their best, even if often they get it wrong, like I do. I suppose knowing what a twat I am makes me an advocate this disposition because if I was ever subject to critical scrutiny I wouldn’t  come out too well. I echo a second sentiment, we are all just wanting to fly digital models of cool places. Well, A-men to that, and I would hope sensible self interest prevails, each team are doing what they must, looking to protect jobs and fair distribution of profit. Brilliant, I hope they find that the truth of it is usually that the good of one party lies in the good of the other and that this disagreement can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. 

[Neil Gardner]

3 minutes ago, RafaPolit said:

So, it doesn't help the community's trust in ED that there are previous occurrences of payment being withheld from other developers.  And that is not speculation.  The fact that it hasn't been made official by ED does not make it speculation, and I believe this is a key difference in how the treatment of information should work.  One thing is to say: "I'm sure ED will not be able to present proof in court"... yeah, I'd be speculating.  On the other hand, the lack of an official acknowledgment about previous decisions (for whatever reasons) to withhold payment does not make certain truths speculations.

Excuse me asking, but how do you known that ED has withheld payment from other developers?  I must confess I was nit aware of this because I have no first hand experience of ED’s business practices, but tha5 doesn’t make you wrong. I am ignorant of many things.Do you mind sharing your source? Thank you.

[Guest]

35 minutes ago, Neil Gardner said:

Excuse me asking, but how do you known that ED has withheld payment from other developers? 

I am aware that there was a payment “issue” with a specific other developer that I won’t name.  But the nature of the issue I have no idea.  Withholding a payment when the obligation is undisputed and all the conditions to the payment have been met is one thing (and in my experience rare). Withholding a payment where the conditions haven’t been met or are disputed is totally different (and happens literally all the time in every business).  What I do know is that developer has continued to work with ED and release modules suggesting that whatever it was got resolved well enough.  

[Neil Gardner]

 I will just say that I now see where RafaPolit’s concerns come from, and to be fair he has significant justification for them. 

[Pipe]

5 hours ago, wombat778 said:

My personal instinct is that if this gets resolved amicably, this will end up being a pretty minor blip and mostly forgotten by regular users.  If the Razbam modules die it will be a bigger deal, but I still suspect it won't be the end of DCS.  I'm sure plenty of people forecasted doom after the Hawk issue, and things are still trucking.  But I could be totally wrong

The Hawk was pretty meh compared to the modules in question now, I do not see any reasonable comparison here

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Pipe said:

The Hawk was pretty meh compared to the modules in question now, I do not see any reasonable comparison here

I don’t think it’s so much about the module quality. At the time I remember lots of people saying how the whole episode shook their faith in DCS and in the whole system, and how they would never buy any more DCS modules again. I’m sure for some it did. But in my experience consumers memories tend to be shorter than expected, especially if/when new “must have” products are released.  But like I said, this is all just my personal opinion and I could be wrong. 
 

Hopefully ED and Razbam get their <profanity> together and sort this out so that we never have to find out

Edited August 7, 2024 by wombat778

[Horns]

10 hours ago, Citizen said:

You're correct!  Mostly.  The average user by default doesn't give a damn if RB or ED is in the right.  What they want is for the product they paid for to work for the short period of times they have available to play, and they want to be sure that development will continue.  Their investment in the slap fight changes radically when Mx. Average User logs on and finds radars not working, flight models depreciating, and hears of public announcements that their products won't be supported moving forward.  Sure, ED can try to communicate that things will be fixed, but the negative perception of their extremely limited free time being destroyed by a dysfunction that could have been avoided will be extremely difficult to shake, especially since it's very difficult to communicate directly to those users.

You have just made a very good case for why releasing public statements will do nothing to help the situation. As far as who's right and who's wrong, most people don't care, and even if ED proved their case beyond doubt, what then? If anything, that will make people more worried about the future of the F-15E, not less. ED proving or not proving their case does absolutely nothing to tell people what the future will hold, which is exactly why ED are doing the right thing waiting until this dispute is resolved and they can provide a roadmap for the future.

[Avimimus]

16 hours ago, NineLine said:

The first one has to be solved before the second one can be worked on.

DCS and ED are healthy right now, and sure this has impacted things and it will need a lot of work once it's solved to move forward, but all our other 3rd Parties and ED are doing well. I don't think anything we do right now in a public sense would be healthy for anyone. Silence is currently the best bet for right now, and later down the road depending on how it all shakes out we can see what we need to do then. But we don't need to "influence cheerleaders", to me that is a bad look. 

I feel like this should be a pinned comment or something. It is a really good point.

[Car147]

After buying all the Razbam aircraft, i for one wont be buying anything else until this sorry state is over. There modules are not cheap, and to think it can be just pulled without notice, or receive no further updates, despite the sim updating constantly, it's just too much of a risk for me.

[primus_TR]

20 hours ago, Citizen said:

but based on what I have seen, ED has been unsuccessful in maintaining public trust. 

I'm part of the 'public' and ED has my trust. Speak for yourself;  I don't remember appointing you to speak for me. 

[Guest]

46 minutes ago, JuiceIsLoose said:

<Deleted to respect JuiceIsLoose’s wishes>

I’m not sure why that information would change any narrative. I could totally imagine a situation where having been informed that Razbam does not intend on using its developer access while the dispute is ongoing,  ED revokes it.  And yet ED could be prepared to reinstate that access on request — meaning Razbam would be “free to update their modules as they choose”.  TBH if I were in EDs shoes that’s probably the approach I would take.  Having adversarial parties with access to sensitive info, especially if they have said they don’t need it, seems like a bad idea. 
 

Not saying any of that is actually the case, just pointing out how random bits of information without context don’t really add much useful information to our understanding of the situation. 

Edited August 7, 2024 by wombat778

[JuiceIsLoose]

8 minutes ago, wombat778 said:

I’m not sure why that information would change any narrative. I could totally imagine a situation where having been informed that Razbam does not intend on using its developer access while the dispute is ongoing,  ED revokes it.  And yet ED could be prepared to reinstate that access on request — meaning Razbam would be “free to update their modules as they choose”.  TBH if I were in EDs shoes that’s probably the approach I would take.  Having adversarial parties with access to sensitive info, especially if they have said they don’t need it, seems like a bad idea. 
 

Not saying any of that is actually the case, just pointing out how random bits of information without context don’t really add much useful information to our understanding of the situation. 

 

Deleted comment to avoid addition disagreements 

[PaulToo]

On 8/6/2024 at 10:38 AM, NineLine said:

Silence is currently the best bet for right now, and later down the road depending on how it all shakes out we can see what we need to do then.

The future will show if this and the choices taken almost a year ago were the right ones.

Until that time my wallet will be closed for the ED store.

[TheFreshPrince]

4 monthsTM

[Schmidtfire]

18 minutes ago, PaulToo said:

The future will show if this and the choices taken almost a year ago were the right ones.

Until that time my wallet will be closed for the ED store.

Acting to protect IP and enforce contractual obligations is understandable. But at the end of the day, this dispute affected updates and support of 4 modules.
Products that I (and many others) has paid a lot of money for. From my perspective, It's hard to see how going after a small company like Razbam instead of keeping
the customers happy, is good move. I hope there are very real and very serious reasons behind Eagle Dynamics choice of actions. Because I liked flying those modules.
Only time will tell I guess.  

[WipeUout]

Listening to lawyers sometimes does not give good results.  I've learned throughout my career that advisors are not in command, they provide advice only, do not hold the responsibility of the decisions and most of the time, it is your gut feeling that you have to follow.  No lawyer will guaranty any result, no matter what is the issue.  If they do, then you have to be very suspicious.

[Brk195]

Any official word on the recent posts by Cpt smiley? I’m not sure I can call it an escalation but it’s definitely not pointing towards a positive outcome.

Also the claim that there are no active talks or any communication whatsoever between the parties has been repeated, this is all quite alarming.

[Gunnar81]

1 hour ago, Brk195 said:

Any official word on the recent posts by Cpt smiley? I’m not sure I can call it an escalation but it’s definitely not pointing towards a positive outcome.

Also the claim that there are no active talks or any communication whatsoever between the parties has been repeated, this is all quite alarming.

Haha, you mean his nonstop ego inflating stream of posts on discord that his followers unquestionably take as pure 100% truth? The guy has completely left any shred of professionalism that Razbam might have had behind and is literally a street corner doom preacher now. I wouldn't dream of acknowledging anything coming from there with an official word if I were ED if it meant saving the universe from destruction lol.

[ustio]

52 minutes ago, Gunnar81 said:

Haha, you mean his nonstop ego inflating stream of posts on discord that his followers unquestionably take as pure 100% truth? The guy has completely left any shred of professionalism that Razbam might have had behind and is literally a street corner doom preacher now. I wouldn't dream of acknowledging anything coming from there with an official word if I were ED if it meant saving the universe from destruction lol.

Regardless if this is true or not, having a dev claim something like having his access revoked from  his own modules is a clear indication that thing are not going well. Doubt he would said anything bad if things are getting better.

 

Which is why I would like to ED to give an update

Edited August 8, 2024 by ustio

[draconus]

1 hour ago, ustio said:

dev claim something like having his access revoked from  his own modules is a clear indication that thing are not going well

No, it's only your interpretation.

[Horns]

3 hours ago, Brk195 said:

Any official word on the recent posts by Cpt smiley? I’m not sure I can call it an escalation but it’s definitely not pointing towards a positive outcome.

Also the claim that there are no active talks or any communication whatsoever between the parties has been repeated, this is all quite alarming.

 

1 hour ago, ustio said:

Regardless... having a dev claim something like having his access revoked from  his own modules is a clear indication that thing are not going well. Doubt he would said anything bad if things are getting better.

 

Which is why I would like to ED to give an update

 

Why would ED comment on an individual user's posts about access to internal systems? As for it being a bad sign, ED isn't obliged to comment whenever someone sees or reads something that makes them nervous about the situation. It's the same as always: ED will comment when they have something to say and a substantial reason to say it.

[Esac_mirmidon]

Trying to be at the very least "kind" with developers, having just a simple gesture of good will until negotiations are fulfilled do no harm

Not far ago RB developers and ED were working to make DCS better for us, sharing the same "passion and support".

In the end is all about kind, respect, passion and love for simulators.

Its hard to find this days something like that when ED takes away from developers even the option to fly modules they have created for all of us.

Just imagine the situation, the feelings when beeing a developer and running DCS just to fly your own creations and this is taked away.

Please, whoever is in charge on ED about this decisions, PLEASE, just for a second, think about each other as human beeings, with feelings, and the same passion about DCS.

Please set your heart frequency on the same Page and resolve this dispute as former fellows you were not so long ago.

Please.

 

Edited August 8, 2024 by Esac_mirmidon

[draconus]

9 minutes ago, Esac_mirmidon said:

Please set your heart frequency on the same Page and resolve this dispute as former fellows you were not so long ago.

When you read "DCS is a sandbox" it's not like children playground. They can't just shake hands and move on. It's business first - let them settle it.