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

[II.JG1_Vonrd]

[AvgeekJoe]

@NineLine Just want to take a moment and say...

THANK YOU to you and the DCS Team for keeping your heads above water and protecting the F-15E Mudhen investment as much as humanly possible.

Hoping for the best outcome.

[scommander2]

37 minutes ago, II.JG1_Vonrd said:

It is kind of very forward to cut off the pain  

[Mike Force Team]

Permanently ending a business relationship is the best outcome for both companies. ED removes RZ modules and likely refunds to give credits for future purchases. RZ removes their products and does not have to worry anymore about not being paid. Problems solved.

 

[Tank50us]

2 minutes ago, Mike Force Team said:

Permanently ending a business relationship is the best outcome for both companies. ED removes RZ modules and likely refunds to give credits for future purchases. RZ removes their products and does not have to worry anymore about not being paid. Problems solved.

 

Honestly the better solution is that RB hands over the rights to the modules to ED, including the source codes. This way, the development can continue under a different banner rather than run the risk of each patch making each module unusable.

[Mike Force Team]

DCS would be better off buying RZ modules outright. I agree. RZ could then take the profits and use for content creation for other companies. 

I agree.

[DmitriKozlowsky]

20 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

Now why on Earth would I argue for ED to tap into Razbam to do a job that Razbam themselves seem to not want to do in the first place? Its KINDA the whole reason why we're here right now listening to little children bicker about their idols not failing or something or other. By the way, what kind of potato are you running?

HPZ Xeon W-2125 4.1, 64GB 2666 ECC, RTX 3070Ti FE. HP Superdrive SSD (system), WD Blue SSD SATA3 6GB app drive. Win 10 Pro. Cannot upgrade to Win11 due to TPM 1.2 and no TPM 2.0 upgrade available.

[Raffi75]

5 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

Permanently ending a business relationship is the best outcome for both companies. ED removes RZ modules and likely refunds to give credits for future purchases. RZ removes their products and does not have to worry anymore about not being paid. Problems solved.

 

Do you realize that many DCS players bought RB modules on Steam and there is no way to return them and get their money back?

[draconus]

6 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

Permanently ending a business relationship is the best outcome for both companies. ED removes RZ modules and likely refunds to give credits for future purchases. RZ removes their products and does not have to worry anymore about not being paid. Problems solved.

How about you removing Razbam products from your DCS, if you had any in the first place, and then give us a rest with your arm chair business advises?

[NineLine]

1 hour ago, Raffi75 said:

Do you realize that many DCS players bought RB modules on Steam and there is no way to return them and get their money back?

There isn't much we can do about this right now, especially as the goal remains to solve this. If the worst outcome happens we will re-evaluate the F-15E and see if there is more we can do one way or the other. Thanks.

[Dangerzone]

To me it's pretty obvious that no one wants this sorted out more than BN and Nineline. 

....their workload will halve if they don't have to monitor this thread anymore. 

Forget the lawyers... let those 2 into the room and this'll be done in no time flat. 

Edited April 10 by Dangerzone

[Hammer1-1]

15 hours ago, DmitriKozlowsky said:

HPZ Xeon W-2125 4.1, 64GB 2666 ECC, RTX 3070Ti FE. HP Superdrive SSD (system), WD Blue SSD SATA3 6GB app drive. Win 10 Pro. Cannot upgrade to Win11 due to TPM 1.2 and no TPM 2.0 upgrade available.

yeah something tells me that you have more problems than you're letting on. Before my current rig, I had an 8086k and a 3080ti with 128gb of ram with 3 SSD drives and it ran fine.

Edited April 10 by Hammer1-1

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

22 hours ago, LordOrion said:

Indeed. RB conduct is "questionable", but they know how do things.

This is absolutely correct. I love the MiG-19, but the RB cult of personality made me leave their discord and really mistrust everything they have to put out. They'll give us the run around, make dunderheaded choices, but honestly? That's to be expected. It happens.

 

18 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

DCS would be better off buying RZ modules outright. I agree. RZ could then take the profits and use for content creation for other companies. 

I agree.

If that were financially or logistically practical, don't you think they'd have done that?

Throwing money at problems is not always the solution.

[Dragon1-1]

Also, I'd like to bring campaigns into this. There are quite a few payware campaigns for RAZBAM modules are this point. It's not right for ED to shaft those campaign creators just because they picked a particular aircraft. I very much hope those campaigns are kept alive, Harrier in particular is basically irreplaceable, as far as capabilities go.

That said, I fully expect campaign makers to be very wary of working with RAZBAM, or their modules, in the future.

Edited April 10 by Dragon1-1

[LordOrion]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Also, I'd like to bring campaigns into this. There are quite a few payware campaigns for RAZBAM modules are this point. It's not right for ED to shaft those campaign creators just because they picked a particular aircraft. I very much hope those campaigns are kept alive, Harrier in particular is basically irreplaceable, as far as capabilities go.

That said, I fully expect campaign makers to be very wary of working with RAZBAM, or their modules, in the future.

Campaings are still on sale and they will continue work as long as the respective modules will work.

Keep them up to date is up to their creators, so I won't worry about them for now.

[NineLine]

2 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Also, I'd like to bring campaigns into this. There are quite a few payware campaigns for RAZBAM modules are this point. It's not right for ED to shaft those campaign creators just because they picked a particular aircraft. I very much hope those campaigns are kept alive, Harrier in particular is basically irreplaceable, as far as capabilities go.

That said, I fully expect campaign makers to be very wary of working with RAZBAM, or their modules, in the future.

We have not allowed any new campaigns that use RB modules since around after this started. South Atlantic would be the exception I think, but I have not see any submitted using that yet.

[Tank50us]

4 hours ago, MiG21bisFishbedL said:

If that were financially or logistically practical, don't you think they'd have done that?

Technically speaking, it is. The reason it hasn't been done is likely because of RB. They've stated they have no intention of giving up the source code in order to "protect the integrity of what we build and deliver" Which considering they haven't worked on the modules for over a year by now.... is kinda rich.

[Mike Force Team]

The relationship between ED and RZ has been strained for over a year. RZ says they have not been paid while ED has said little officially.

RZ withdraws their modules to symbolize their serious about getting paid. ED seems content let the dispute languish.

The next logical step in the disagreement is the likely cessation of business.

[NineLine]

53 minutes ago, Mike Force Team said:

ED seems content let the dispute languish.

 

As we have stated repeatedly, it is going through legal proceedings. This is not languishing. 

[cfrag]

5 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

The relationship between ED and RZ has been strained for over a year.

I believe that is the one bit about this sordid affair that can be accepted as fact

5 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

RZ says they have not been paid while ED has said little officially.

Which makes RZ the ones being unprofessional. You simply don't bring your inner disputes to the customer. I'm not a fan of ED's communication, but in this case not saying anything until the entire issue is resolved is what pros do. RZ is taking a childish approach, trying to win in the public space what can't be decided by the public.

5 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

RZ withdraws their modules to symbolize their serious about getting paid.

I beg to strongly disagree. In business, you are always serious about getting paid. It's only about getting paid. RZ didn't 'withdraw their modules' to symbolize anything, they pulled another public hissy fit. Dead giveaway: they talked about it in on an open forum using a prepared communique designed to pour some more gasoline on the flames. A pro would have let the lawyers tell ED, and then let ED handle communication. 

5 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

ED seems content let the dispute languish.

I don't know who is right or wrong, and it's not up to me to judge. There will be some kind of settlement down the road. The more publicly is said about this, the more damage is done, especially if there are egos involved, and IIRC both sides have more than enough of that...

5 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

The next logical step in the disagreement is the likely

The first logical step in any dispute is to STFU about the entire case and let the lawyers deal with it. RZ may have been wronged, who knows. They also behave like spoilt little brats. This does not bode well, and I'm still hoping for for an amicable resolution down the road. The more is said in public, though, the smaller the chances for this to happen - because, again, Egos (yeah, capital E). 

[DmitriKozlowsky]

14 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

yeah something tells me that you have more problems than you're letting on. Before my current rig, I had an 8086k and a 3080ti with 128gb of ram with 3 SSD drives and it ran fine.

System runs fine. Its clean. Runs my DCC software fine. Runs Houdini, Maya, NUKE, Rhino3D, Renderman(CPU and GPU) , Unreal,without problems. In DCS I get 150-180 FPS in AV-8B and Mirage. 120 avg in UH-1 , KA-50, and Gazelle.  AH-64D is really my only two digit FPS performer. As DCS is my only game. I judge it against Unigine stress test. Unigine gives 150-180 FPS at 2560X1440 high textures. I get no black screens, no crashes in DCC apps or in unigine, and with latest 583.72 Studio drivers I get intermittent black screen flicker, and mostly in AH-64D.

[Dallenbach]

vor 18 Minuten schrieb DmitriKozlowsky:

System runs fine. Its clean. Runs my DCC software fine. Runs Houdini, Maya, NUKE, Rhino3D, Renderman(CPU and GPU) , Unreal,without problems. In DCS I get 150-180 FPS in AV-8B and Mirage. 120 avg in UH-1 , KA-50, and Gazelle.  AH-64D is really my only two digit FPS performer. As DCS is my only game. I judge it against Unigine stress test. Unigine gives 150-180 FPS at 2560X1440 high textures. I get no black screens, no crashes in DCC apps or in unigine, and with latest 583.72 Studio drivers I get intermittent black screen flicker, and mostly in AH-64D.

Have you tried the game ready driver?

[DmitriKozlowsky]

18 minutes ago, Dallenbach said:

Have you tried the game ready driver?

Yes. I tried 583.72 Game Ready. Worked fine. However I appear to have somewhat less black screen and black flickering with Studio driver.

[Aapje]

@cfrag

I think that you are ignoring that there is a big disparity in size. The probably outdated figures I saw was that that ED has 190 employees vs 10 for Razbam. And this also reflects a difference in revenue. In fact, by not paying the share of the module sales, ED is choking off Razbam's financials. In general, ED has a lot more power that they can use.

Ultimately, it is ED's choice to have a big dependency on third party developers, and that automatically means that the the buck stops with them.

Quote

You simply don't bring your inner disputes to the customer.

Because ED chooses to do business with third parties, the disputes with those third parties are not 'inner.' That is the consequence of ED's choice to work with (paid) third parties.

This kind of arrangement typically generates friction, because the interests of ED and the third parties are not exactly the same, and they don't fall under the same corporate hierarchy that can resolve disputes and which aligns their financial interests.

It's easy to say that they should not bother the customer with this, but there is no way to achieve this without violating the rights of ED or the third party developers. For example, VEAO left after ED demanded things from them which they found unacceptable. It would be a violation of their human rights if a third party developer is not allowed to walk away in such a situation, because they they could be forced into anything.

But then the customer will see the impact if the module gets withdrawn or development stops.

Quote

There will be some kind of settlement down the road.

Probably, but that doesn't mean that the modules will remain in DCS.

As far as I can tell, both parties have a financial claim on each other, one for payments due on sales through the store, and one for breach of contract. That part needs to be settled one way or the other.

Then the other issue is whether the Razbam modules will get bugfixes and/or further development. With Razbam apparently being unwilling to sell the source code to ED, the only possible solution would be for the parties to mend their relationship and keep working together. But I find that hard to imagine due to actions from both sides, like the time bomb planted by Razbam, and the total stop in payments by ED.

[Hiob]

@Aapje There is no underdog bonus in legal contracts. People need to stop romantacising the matter.