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

[draconus]

5 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

@BIGNEWY I know it has worked but we miss seeing new enhancements 

We miss seeing Razbam creating a new YouTube video announcements. I always enjoyed their videos because they were well made.

Razbam is the only developer that is not holding up to their end of the service agreement. 

Deja vu?

[Beirut]

10 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

Good. Let me know when its finally finished.

 

When what is finally finished, my F-15E or any of the other 30+ modules I own? I'm not sure any are "finished".

 

This is DCS after all, my esteemed fellow flyer. 

 

10 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

 . . . but hope is what keeps you alive?

 

Day by glorious day. 

[Hammer1-1]

25 minutes ago, Beirut said:

 

When what is finally finished, my F-15E or any of the other 30+ modules I own? I'm not sure any are "finished".

They may be unfinished, but everyone is still actively working on them. Except for Razbam, so again let me know when its finished. Maybe Ill buy it again. You know, alongside my other 60 or so aircraft that people are working on? The ones that still show signs of life?

25 minutes ago, Beirut said:

Day by glorious day. 

Or at least until "officially" taken off life support.

Edited July 3 by Hammer1-1

[Beirut]

9 minutes ago, Hammer1-1 said:

They may be unfinished, but everyone is still actively working on them.

 

I admire your optimism. 

 

9 minutes ago, Hammer1-1 said:

Or at least until "officially" taken off life support.

 

Us or the module? 

[Hammer1-1]

9 hours ago, Beirut said:

 

I admire your optimism. 

 

 

Us or the module? 

You know, the UH-1H has been officially dead since around 2016/2017 with sporadic updates here and there. Its been done for years, and now even the community is coming together to build the external model (and internal as well IIRC) to bring it back up to standards. Hardly any of these modules are in beta anymore except those released in the past 5-6 years, and even those are mostly fleshed out. Every single last one of them still has a functional team thats willing to put out an update here and there; even OctopusG still puts out updates for the donkey from time to time, and he's just a one man crew. Mag3 still trying their best at maintaining their Mig21 while attempting to put out a new module or two over the last 10 some odd years because even though they havent been touched in a while, doesnt mean that work isnt ongoing in some way, shape or form.

For all you want to believe and hope, it doesnt change the fact that Razbam has practically abandoned every single one of their modules so the Ecuadorian air force could possibly get some better deals on some Tucano modules rather than follow the contract stipulations. And in any possible chance that Razbam finally puts their head on straight and starts working again, I sincerely doubt many people will be too happy theyre back, and thrilled to buy another module from them again after this...those modules are as good as dead; no ED working on them to update or fix bugs, no new features; they will be the only modules in DCS whose life cycle cant be extended. Seriously, how many Razbam modules are feature complete? Now Im not going to ding people for wanting to keep their F-15E, by all means enjoy them...for as long as you can...while you still can. Optimism may be better than pessimism, but realism...kind of makes pessimism and optimism useless. They either pick up where they left off (which at this time puts them 1 year behind current ED tech, so they're 2+ years behind schedule now) or they cut and leave (most likely).

Their modules are considered brain dead, so unless a miracle happens....

[Beirut]

19 minutes ago, Hammer1-1 said:

 . . . but realism...

 

...is a word that should be used around here with the greatest of caution.

 

Perhaps the best way to describe any part of all of this is "on a wing and a prayer". 

[Hammer1-1]

42 minutes ago, Beirut said:

 

...is a word that should be used around here with the greatest of caution.

 

Perhaps the best way to describe any part of all of this is "on a wing and a prayer". 

When it comes to outcomes where everyone hopes for the best and prepares for the worst, realism is the best word to use. Realistically, Razbams F-15E is dead. Its not going anywhere for a very long time, if ever again. The best way to describe any part of this now is calling the F-15E "Lazarus" if work starts on it again...and only if Razbam opted to farm out the work to another 3rd party because I just dont see them being relevant here again.

[Beirut]

1 hour ago, Hammer1-1 said:

. . .  realism is the best word to use.

 

When I'm sitting in my chair, wearing my Chuck Norris pajamas, and flying a fighter jet over Norway with a load of MK-82s, I'll try remember how realism governs my world. 

[Hammer1-1]

52 minutes ago, Beirut said:

 

When I'm sitting in my chair, wearing my Chuck Norris pajamas, and flying a fighter jet over Norway with a load of MK-82s, I'll try remember how realism governs my world. 

ok, still doesnt change the facts.

[Beirut]

10 minutes ago, Hammer1-1 said:

ok, still doesnt change the facts.

 

The fact that the F-15E is great? 

 

Agreed. 

[draconus]

6 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

Razbams F-15E is dead

Here's where we don't agree. When the high quality module works and brings fun it is pretty far from dead, no matter how long it has no updates. This is realism.

[MAXsenna]

Here's where we don't agree. When the high quality module works and brings fun it is pretty far from dead, no matter how long it has no updates. This is realism.

Exactly! My 328i cabrio was just as fun to drive even if the ABS sensor was faulty.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[draconus]

51 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

328i cabrio

connaisseur

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

46 minutes ago, draconus said:

connaisseur

Well of course, he’s ‘playing’ DCS after all

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

Exactly! My 328i cabrio was just as fun to drive even if the ABS sensor was faulty.

While that may definitely be true, I'm sure that it also bugged you that the ABS sensor was not working even though you paid for it. To me only one of the annoyances of the Mudhen (and Farmer, and Harrier, and Mirage) is the fact that they now seemingly are out of service. That is bad. Annoying. Heart-breaking even. 

What really goes against the grain for me with the F15-E is that I paid for promised future features (you know, when the complete module is published after it leaves "Early Access") that now won't arrive. It's like when you purchased the 328i with the promise of a new leather coat for the back seats, and the garage then goes under without making good on their promise -- but they took your money.

A broken promise. I have similar reservations with regards to my F-16, Mosquito, F-1, Jeff, Tomcat, YAK, Viggen, Apache, Hind, Super Carrier and other (e.g. WWII asset pack). The big difference is that there still may be a sliver of hope for those modules. I want to know if ED plans to keep their promise with the Mudhen (and yes, ED sold me the Mudhen; I believe that they are accountable for whatever they sold me). The concept of "Early Access" in DCS is becoming farcical (after 5 years of early access, ED might as well admit that they do not intend to keep their promise to finish "as quickly as possible", if at all); just sell the modules 'as is'; to me ED have lost all credibility in that regard anyway. Stop pretending that you care, your actions show otherwise. 

So, the Mudhen is dead development-wise, and as long as it is still working with current DCS, we can at least get some mileage out of it. We overpaid, though, and putting our trust into ED seems to have been a bad decision. We won't be getting the F-15E's promised features, and it may be soon that a new version of DCS comes out that no longer supports it, just like DCS stopped supporting the Hawk a couple of years ago. So yeah, to me the Mudhen's a "dead bird flapping" for now.

Disappointing to say the least. Let's hope everyone involved get their act together and come up with a good solution for us customers.

[MAXsenna]

3 minutes ago, cfrag said:

While that may definitely be true, I'm sure that it also bugged you that the ABS sensor was not working even though you paid for it.

Nah, it was out of EA, and out of support. Had to fix it myself. Only thing that bothered me was when I had to emergency brake for a badger that obviously own the road and I got four unequal tires and smoked the whole area.

5 minutes ago, cfrag said:

It's like when you purchased the 328i with the promise of a new leather coat for the back seats,

I agree with everything you say. You have very valid points. I may misunderstand your analogy though, because I've never seen a BMW cabrio without leather seats.

1 hour ago, draconus said:

connaisseur

 

43 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Well of course, he’s ‘playing’ DCS after all

Of course! I've got a Cosmo black 330i cabrio now, with light green leather seats. Not sure if I should call it Big Ben or Little Liquorice?  

[cfrag]

5 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

I've never seen a BMW cabrio without leather seats.

You sweet, sweet summer child  welcome to the 'fields of desperation' when during corona anything was sold - even a Beemer Cab where a dog had chewed through the leather of a back seat.

(oh, above image is that of a Lambo backseat being chewed up)

Edited July 4 by cfrag

[MAXsenna]

10 minutes ago, cfrag said:

You sweet, sweet summer child  welcome to the 'fields of desperation' when during corona anything was sold - even a Beemer Cab where a dog had chewed through the leather of a back seat.

Well, it DID come with leather seats on delivery though. Expensive hobby, dogs are.  

 

11 minutes ago, cfrag said:

(oh, above image is that of a Lambo backseat being chewed up)

Heretic doggy! Ouch, that's like 10K out of the window right there.  

[Gorn_GER]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

While that may definitely be true, I'm sure that it also bugged you that the ABS sensor was not working even though you paid for it. To me only one of the annoyances of the Mudhen (and Farmer, and Harrier, and Mirage) is the fact that they now seemingly are out of service. That is bad. Annoying. Heart-breaking even. 

What really goes against the grain for me with the F15-E is that I paid for promised future features (you know, when the complete module is published after it leaves "Early Access") that now won't arrive. It's like when you purchased the 328i with the promise of a new leather coat for the back seats, and the garage then goes under without making good on their promise -- but they took your money.

A broken promise. I have similar reservations with regards to my F-16, Mosquito, F-1, Jeff, Tomcat, YAK, Viggen, Apache, Hind, Super Carrier and other (e.g. WWII asset pack). The big difference is that there still may be a sliver of hope for those modules. I want to know if ED plans to keep their promise with the Mudhen (and yes, ED sold me the Mudhen; I believe that they are accountable for whatever they sold me). The concept of "Early Access" in DCS is becoming farcical (after 5 years of early access, ED might as well admit that they do not intend to keep their promise to finish "as quickly as possible", if at all); just sell the modules 'as is'; to me ED have lost all credibility in that regard anyway. Stop pretending that you care, your actions show otherwise. 

So, the Mudhen is dead development-wise, and as long as it is still working with current DCS, we can at least get some mileage out of it. We overpaid, though, and putting our trust into ED seems to have been a bad decision. We won't be getting the F-15E's promised features, and it may be soon that a new version of DCS comes out that no longer supports it, just like DCS stopped supporting the Hawk a couple of years ago. So yeah, to me the Mudhen's a "dead bird flapping" for now.

Disappointing to say the least. Let's hope everyone involved get their act together and come up with a good solution for us customers.

I Agree with you. 

Many people in this forum seem to confuse a promise with hope. To clarify: there has never been an official promise that the F-15E will continue to be developed. At best, there was an overly enthusiastic comment that might have given that impression.

I often read statements like: "The F-15E is too important to DCS to not be developed further – it's a flagship module alongside the F-16, F/A-18, and AH-64D." But let’s try to view this from a business perspective, where the goal is to generate profit.

Just as a working assumption: the revenue for a DCS module may be structured something like this – 50% from pre-order and early access (shortly after release), another 20% during the first year through marketing and early access visibility, and the remaining 30% through long-term updates and sales.

If we go with that model, the F-15E has already generated 50–70% of its potential total revenue. And if we believe the unofficial reports circulating on Reddit and elsewhere, the original developers haven’t yet been paid for their work – meaning ED has received all that revenue while mainly incurring costs for marketing and running the e-shop.

Now imagine a legal settlement between ED and RAZBAM, where ED retains the revenue from the F-15E, and in return, RAZBAM is no longer pursued by ED for alleged IP violations. From a purely financial and managerial perspective – what incentive would ED have to continue development on the F-15E, knowing that only 30% of potential earnings remain?

As someone with experience in software development, I can add this: taking over someone else’s codebase can sometimes be as time-consuming as rewriting everything from scratch. If ED does not have access to fully documented and modular source code, then the only parts they can use immediately are the CAD models and textures. Everything else will likely require a lot of effort – effort that may not be justified by the expected revenue.

Plus, ED has plenty on their plate with the modules they already develop in-house.

So to be clear: the real-world importance of the F-15E has no bearing on its importance as a DCS module – especially when viewed through a business and development lens. And the reasoning for possibly not continuing development has already been outlined publicly by razbam_prowler in a Discord post on April 7th, 2025, where he stated:

"Only RAZBAM Simulations is able to properly support, update, and develop our products."

Even with source code access, continued development may simply not be economically viable.

I want to emphasize: this is not meant to accuse or blame either ED or RAZBAM, or any individual or company involved. I just want to offer some context and encourage a bit more critical thinking before putting blind trust in assumptions or wishful thinking.

Of course – if ED were to make a clear commitment to continue developing the module and actually deliver bugfixes (like addressing the frequent multicrew desync issues), that would be fantastic. But until that happens, I prefer to remain cautious with my optimism.

Additionally, I currently don’t consider the terms under which the F-15E was sold in Early Access to be fully met. More features were advertised than have been delivered so far. As long as the legal dispute between ED and RAZBAM is ongoing, I’ll refrain from further judgment. But once an agreement is reached, I believe it’s important to reiterate: the obligation to customers isn’t fulfilled by a statement or an internal decision – it’s fulfilled only when the advertised features are actually delivered in full and without major bugs. Regardless of what reasoning might be used afterwards to justify halting development.

Personally, I'm really looking forward to the MiG-29 – I even pre-ordered it, because I trust ED’s own modules not to be affected by these kinds of issues. From now on, I’ll only be buying third-party modules if they’re nearly finished or already show signs of long-term support.

Take the F-4E from Heatblur, for example. I’ve been flying it in multicrew almost every other day with a friend, and we haven’t run into anything close to the kind of issues I’ve experienced time and again with the F-15E.

[cfrag]

10 minutes ago, Gorn_GER said:

Just as a working assumption: the revenue for a DCS module may be structured something like this – 50% from pre-order and early access (shortly after release), another 20% during the first year through marketing and early access visibility, and the remaining 30% through long-term updates and sales.

If we go with that model, the F-15E has already generated 50–70% of its potential total revenue.

I believe this to be an astute observation. And irrespective of who owns and maintains the original code base, it also explains why most - if not all - modules receive so few and sluggish support. Since ED is on a one-off sales business model, we can expect EA modules that do not make the initial sales expectation to stop being actively developed within 4 months (meaning, they are put into maintenance mode), and the rest being put into maintenance mode after a year or so. I do not believe that the majority of the EA modules that I own (I own them all) are actively developed (to me, 'active development' means at least a fixed 0.2 FTE (1 day/8 hours per week) are allocated, and used to create new features; everything else is maintenance). I am under no illusions that, for example, ED will ever complete the YAK-52, which now I own for 6+ years, still has no damage model to speak of, and ED telling me

Quote

The time a product remains in Early Access can vary widely based on the scope of the project, technical hurdles, and how complete the module is when it enters Early Access. Eagle Dynamics and all of our third parties strive to make this period as short as possible

The profits have been made for this module, there is little (if any) business interest for ED to invest into the YAK now. Any investments into the YAK are opportunistic face-saving gestures.

So, the F-15E faces a double whammy: it has exhausted most of it's profitability (12+ months past release, and this publicity nightmare), so there is little incentive to develop it further at this point in time, even if they had everything inhouse: too little return on investment.

AND: code base, knowhow and assets are likely not owned by ED (even after the Hawk disaster), so even if ED somehow receive ownership, it's highly unlikely that we'll see this incarnation of the mudhen receive any significant updates - it's simply not financially viable. Just like all the other EA modules that are past the 12 month line. ED makes more money selling new modules, and those are lined up already: the FF 15C, 29A, Fat Amy. They'll all be sold as "Early Access", and they'll likely all be forever in EA. It's not ill will - it's how ED's business model works.

[Aja]

2 hours ago, cfrag said:

"... so there is little incentive to develop it further at this point in time, even if they had everything inhouse: too little return on investment...."

 

There is hope that Razbam has done some research and found an intersection of customers who know him from DCS and potential other customers elsewhere (for example, in MS Flight Simulator). If he has figured out that a damaged name due to an unfinished module will reduce his future sales, then he will have the motivation to finish the module.

[Aapje]

2 hours ago, cfrag said:

I believe this to be an astute observation. And irrespective of who owns and maintains the original code base, it also explains why most - if not all - modules receive so few and sluggish support. Since ED is on a one-off sales business model, we can expect EA modules that do not make the initial sales expectation to stop being actively developed within 4 months (meaning, they are put into maintenance mode), and the rest being put into maintenance mode after a year or so. I do not believe that the majority of the EA modules that I own (I own them all) are actively developed (to me, 'active development' means at least a fixed 0.2 FTE (1 day/8 hours per week) are allocated, and used to create new features; everything else is maintenance). I am under no illusions that, for example, ED will ever complete the YAK-52, which now I own for 6+ years, still has no damage model to speak of, and ED telling me

Yeah, and the people who buy early access modules, rather than wait for the module to be finished, are encouraging this behavior.

[Hammer1-1]

8 hours ago, draconus said:

Here's where we don't agree. When the high quality module works and brings fun it is pretty far from dead, no matter how long it has no updates. This is realism.

thats hope. It will eventually break more and become another hawk. that will be sooner rather than later, and thats realistic. again, by all means enjoy it. its already falling apart, you can deny it all you want, but your feelings wont change reality because in the end what you have now is all that you're going to get. 

[cfrag]

3 minutes ago, Aapje said:

the people who buy early access modules, rather than wait for the module to be finished, are encouraging this behavior.

Agreed - and I'm part of this problem. I believe it would be more honest if ED dropped the act to pretend that they will "finish" a module. Put differently, which of the modules in the catalogue (including maps) is not EA? And which of these do we believe ED will really follow up on their promise to finish? Let's be clear-eyed about this: almost none. So let's stop pretending that these modules are still being developed. Remove the EA label, and be done with it. I'll never see damage model for the YAK. Big new additions for SC? Pull the other one. Sniper Pod XR, towed decoy, for the Viper? Sure, any time. It's only been 6 years. I recommend that ED tet the modules stand on their own merits (of which there decidedly are many), and stop making promises that they cannot keep. 

[draconus]

1 hour ago, Hammer1-1 said:

It will eventually break more and become another hawk. that will be sooner rather than later, and thats realistic.

No, it's speculation.

@cfrag @Gorn_GER You forget that companies get punished for such behavior so they'd put their sales at risk. Also it's unfounded assumption that only first year is good for new module's sales. Don't forget that players come and go and potentially find and buy DCS modules every day, no matter when they where released.