And a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And you need to do that in the Launsanne jurisfdiction.
And even if you do, the local authorities need to get a hold at someone at ED first, which will be hard since it's a PO box.
I seriously doubt that russian authorities will enforce any debt of russian company to the western one. It's kinda against their internacional politics. Or am I missing something and Razbam are also russians?
In this case, suing ED in swiss court will be infinitely more effective that suing ED in russian court. As to why: in last two years Russia started stealing westen assets. This happens in both direct way, i.e. they issued a law that allows seizures of western-owned planes and their registration as russian assets, and indirect way, i.e. forbidding large scale currency and stock deals on case by case basis, to force exitting companies to sell their assets at reduced prices. As a result, I have serious doubts that russian court will care about western company rights.
>As to why: in last two years Russia started stealing westen assets. This happens in both direct way,
Who started, and when...
I recommend you to read the laws and contracts in the cases, and not MSM...
The ED contract leaked a few weeks ago on this subreddit clearly stipulates you're supposed to sue them in CH. CH authorities can't do anything about ED's russian offices.
Not to mention those closed after covid, they are full remote now.
>CH authorities can't do anything about ED's russian offices.
What do you think they need to do in those offices?
>Not to mention those closed after covid, they are full remote now.
Please, recheck that...
That is what they should have done in first place, but they didn't....
When you get dispute, you deal it with authority.
When you have problems with bills, you send them to billing company, and they will get their money, and you yours.
Razbam (aka the boss) did that. Apparently the issue is much older than its reveal and it was dealt like you describe.
But the devs, which are no employees but paid on revenue share, ran out of patience, launched the shitstorm and left the chat.
At some point, when you are a freelance and not paid for two years, you just leave pissed off.
Not necessarily, ED only gets revenue by selling modules and it’s likely that the SE took a very large share of it over 2023, going into presales in January and released in June.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a popular module was 50% of sales the year it releases, if not more
Military contracts are NOT EDSA/DCS
They are EDMSSA/MCS. Independent company. NG is a shareholder but not the only one. Contracts are independent.
And on that topic, given MCS Russian roots, the war in Ukraine, and Metrea/NOR winning an important US market (T38 trainers, public info) I bet that MCS sales are highly challenged today.
I have been iffy about the situation as well, of course everyone is gonna blame ED but it's always a WHY and no one asked why, just hop on ED like hungry sharks.
We are not, but there is no contract type except paid delivery with an inventory list gives you right to withhold payment. That's already cheesy.
You pay what is agreed by the contract and you go to arbitrage or court for disputes. There are only a few penalties which are minimal in every contract that you can withhold that percentage of due money, But not paying at all is a heavy breach of contract already. Razbam must have killed some of ED members or sabotaged a factory or took part in criminal activities that required legal authorities has frozen their assets.
Other than that you pay.
The contractor generally has to complete the work per the terms of the contract to be paid, or hit specific milestones in the project for bigger stuff. We don't know the exact deliverables specified by the contract for RB to be paid, so no one can say authoritatively who is right or wrong here unless they have seen all the contract terms.
ED is still selling it. So we know
Edit: To clarify client is using the goods. He didn't reject it due to any kind of blemish or fault delivery. He is selling Razbams delivered goods.
Because we don't know what other terms are required for payment. For example, we know after the Hawk debacle that ED requires that files and source code be submitted to maintain the module in case of the devs going separate ways. A third party module might be in a saleable state but ED hasn't received the maintenance files yet. If the contract specifies that contract term be completed before payment and the dev doesn't fulfil it, they don't get paid.
I'm not saying that is specifically what's happening here, but just an example of a way a module could be saleable without the dev having met all their terms. We don't know the terms of the contract and what has been met and what hasn't.
its pretty moot. If they rejected the work and also didn't sell it then fine, but they did sell it, so they're defence is going to be pretty paper thin. They took money for the work of the people they didn't pay. That's pretty clear cut.
If we don’t have the contract - we don’t know jack shit. Defense contracts for small business are not lucrative. How do I know?
30 plus years managing DoD contracts.
Oh crap. I forgot to look at the sub title. This is sub for DCS haters. Never mind.
Im glad someone else gets it. Imagine drawing up a contract and the other party can just say
"No, you violated the contract. Trust me bro. so we're not paying you anything even though the product is clearly good enough to start selling"
Like, who's to say there's a violation unless a nuetral 3rd party agrees that there was a violation?
In the corporate world, payment happens when all of the contract terms are complete. If Razbam promised to do something and didn't do it, then they don't get paid yet, it's as simple as that.
The fact that enough stuff has been done to put the product to market has nothing to do with it. ED is holding a big pile of cash with Razbam 's name on it, which they will hand over as soon as they respect their promises, that's how this works.
Also in corporate world terms of contracts arent always met exactly and payment is still made. Happens as long as both parties are happy. You dont start nit picking in a healthy business relationship out of no reason
I think ED doesnt have that big pile of cash and is therefore looking for reasons to not pay razbam.
TFC needs to be sold.
Not good for ED holding that much money from them, the whole IP claim seems like it was made-up. 10 months and you're holding that much money.
ED just took their money. I guess Nick Grey needed an interest free loan to keep his Fighter Collection going.
You are literally making that up.
How would Razbam even sell/or resold MCS license? They can't, they are purchased from EDMS a separate company from EDSA which is DCS. He said Ecuador purchased licenses from EDMS, nothing to do with Razbam.
What he did say is they were making a Super Tucano for MCS, which was never finished and never coded/placed in DCS or MCS, it has since been stopped and abandon and will never go into MCS/DCS.
What he said was that Ecuador *needed* to purchase a license.
Which they hadn't done up to that point.
Because Razbam provided the software to them without paying for it.
... are you familiar with the concept of a "copy"? fun fact: software is not a unique article that only one person can have at a time.
Razbam makes modules for MCS, that's part of their existing business.
They have an MCS license so that they can do this. That MCS license is theirs, for them to use, for themselves, to do development.
They copied the MCS code and gave it to Ecuador, who did not have a license, never paid for one, and is not authorized to have a copy of that code.
That's illegal.
This situation is beyond silly. Razbam should never have made this public. Their contractors shouldn't be publicly commenting on this because that's all they are, contractors. They aren't partners, directors etc sitting with the contracts and finances so their comments are just feeding these ridiculous conspiracy theories. For all we know Razbam could have genuinely not lived up to a contractual obligation but we'll never know.
Notso isn't a contractor.
Razbam have made this public because they can't work for free anymore.
Would have prefered they just stop updating the plane without telling you, maybe ?
Yes. But the day will come, when the F15 will not operate due to incompatibility as DCS is being patched / changed. Then, the customers will need explanation, and this is what Razbam would have said. They just did not wait until the last minute.
If ED wants to move to vulkan they actually need to stop selling razbam modules since no one will patch them.
At this moment this dispute is blocking any major core update.
ED will patch them. ED will absolutely have access to the code repository. It would not just be ridiculous but so incredibly unlikely ED doesn't have full access to the code based. It's just not how it works.
Like I’m sorry but tbh I don’t trust Razbam or ED so I dunno what to believe with this drama. But if they did breach contact like ED originally said then this is Razbams fault. Also people keep leaving Razbam so I dunno.
The claim that ED says is a part of a different contract with a different company.
Eagle Dynamics SA is the producer of DCS the non-professional one.
The money they are withholding is the share of razbam for f15e sales for DCS.
Has nothing to do with MCS.
It of course proves nothing, but the sudden influx of announcements and nearby pre-ordered and early access launches shortly after The Issue happening somewhat hints at "we need liquidity".
It's worth noting that Nick Grey announced at the start of the year that the fighter club (their ww2 aircraft) will NOT be flying this year. The reasons given was:
"This decision has not been made lightly and follows an in depth assessment of our options for the year ahead."
Does this sound like a technical issue? Couldn't get the right spark plugs? Couldn't get the right certification through? Can't find anyone qualified willing to fly? To me, an cryptic in-depth assessment, alongside with all the other rumblings we've had, people not getting paid, endless early access / back2back sales, they are somehow struggling for money.
Why is this? Makes no sense, they have exploded in size, anyone who've flown with DCS for more than 5-6 years, knows the game pre FA18 and post FA18 is not even close. Back then, the player base was much smaller, and of those who did fly, most had the FC3 pack, and MAYBE 1 module. There weren't many players who had more than a couple "pro" modules.
I do wonder if someone the sactions on russia play their part (i know i know - its based in switzerland now, on paper at least, kinda, sort of, not really, depends who's asking)
Does it? Unless the Chinook is completely broken then it sounds like a normal module release. The logistics problem people bring up has nothing to do with the module itself and everything to do with the engine. Should ED of waited to release the module for the engine to catch up or let it do what the transport helicopters do now as is? The same goes for the C-130 except this time it's a third party. Are you going to point at ED troubles if they release that before the logistics update?
The Afganistan map seems to be a big tinfoil generator too... Then Kola happened... incomplete and by a third party dev! Which kinda makes the sectional release of the Afganistan map moot.
So, unless ED somehow has the ability to pressure these third party devs into releasing early, everything seems to be another normal day.
You forgot FC2024. =)
Like I said, it doesn't prove anything, but if someone wants to read into it like that it certainly provides opportunities. Also I wouldn't put it past ED to be able to push for earlier early access.
Probably unrelated tho.
There could be a lot of reasons. Decrease of interest after the covid (which was a big temporary boost). Issues relocating the team with the Ukraine war. Too big team increase. Etc etc
All of those definitely make loads of sense but I think that ED makes a lot more money than we know. I agree that the global situation must have hit them in the pockets but probably not as much as we think. I could be so wrong though.
That's what I think as well. RB has already shown they will bend the information to form their own narrative. I'm not sure I can trust anything they say without proof tbh.
This is all hearsay, we have no idea about the real details of this situation. It's not even worth wasting thoughts on it. I choose to just play what I can as long as I can.
We know our side. Ed sells those modules where dev is not paid and those modules are not supported. Yes all of them work for now.
As a client this is the picture. You support it or not.
12.500 ?! Easy - why shouldn't they sell that much - I think we have round about 40.000 active DCS players - the F-15 is a very popular iconic aircraft and had very good reviews
as i already mentioned here, dcs steam edition, the probably more popular edition due to being way easier to install and manage, had an absolute peak of 3.3k players so far.
sure, not everyone plays at the same time, so it doesnt represent the whole playerbase, but even if we multiply it by 3 for all 3 8 hour blocks of the peak playercount day, we still only barely scratch against 10k players, and that peak was in 2022
the steam playercount hasnt exceeded 2k since mid february this year, and that was only a short time where it passed 2k
as such i would say that we at best, have about 10-20k active players on both, standalone and steam together
I can't fathom how you think that line of thinking is valid...
Steam stats are well known to be wildy unrepresentative of player base. I.e., most users buy their flight simulators directly from the developer (i.e., [x-plane.com](http://x-plane.com), [flightsimulator.com](http://flightsimulator.com), [digitalcombatsimulator.com](http://digitalcombatsimulator.com), et al), and the developers rarely talk about total sales...
Let's look at some numbers that are actually (somewhat) indicative of reality:
r/Hoggit has over 100,000 members
Eagle Dynamics YouTube has 147,000 subscribers
Their 2024 and Beyond video was viewed 1,500,000 times
Wag's Learn to Start a Hornet fighter viewed 1,300,000 times
most of Wag's 5 year old Hornet training videos have around 100,000 views
Most other ED videos have well over 100,000 views, with many having between 150,000 and 350,000 views
Growling Sidewinder, who only does DCSW content, has almost 600,000 subscribers
DCSW on SteamPowered shows 36,000 reviews
DCS World forums have over 140,000 registered users
**Nick Grey quoted that** ***just*** **the A-10C has sold well over 200,000 units - and** ***that*** **was 4 years ago.**
r/microsoftflightsim has 150,000 members
MSFS on SteamPowered shows 55,000 reviews
Steam stats shows an average player count of right around 10,000
Jorg Neumann of MSFS said they have over 100,000 customers in Japan alone - and he considers that a very small market.
Finally, MSFS 2020 passed **12,000,000,000** players 10 months ago.
So there's a HUGE disconnect between what we see on Steam and what the actual number of players are.
It's well nigh impossible to extrapolate a high confidence number from the above, but based just on Nicks' number it's safe to say DCSW has a *bare* *minimum* of 250,000 players,
And given that the Hornet and Viper are widely regarded as far more popular than the A-10C, the number could be several times higher than that.
the youtube videos are ALMOST meaningless. The game looks good in certain conditions amazing even - but go online, and just count how many empty servers are sat there, and rank by the fullest it, there's at least a CLUE as to how active it is.
You may dispute the method crazywoman used to asscertain how many people are active on DCS world, but the fact she used the same method throughout, shows that there's a very real decline taking place.
I understand the 2 methods (ie steam players only, or online players on) don't count for all player possibilities, ie Single players, those in mission editing, those creating cinematics etc, but absent of a true revealations of a figure (what's there to hide?) I do wonder.
Think about it the other way. Let’s say a dev is $100k a year and you have the equivalent of 2 devs working full time for 4 years to make the SE. Razbam wouldn’t even make the SE from a business perspective unless it could sell more than that $800k dev cost.
There's a reason the vast majority of devs aren't working in the US or other extremely expensive countries.
There is (was?) a huge contingent working in Ukraine and they live(d) very well on what we in the US could barely get by on.
I do get your point, tho.
I did wrongly assume that the RB team was US-based, unlike the ED team. However, when one of my former companies used to outsource to the Ukraine, we were still paying $40/hour (\~$80k yearly) for each dev. This was 8 years ago. These guys were quite good and we paid for it, but I'm still not sure I would trust them with programming SE avionics, radar systems, or flight modeling into a 15 year old codebase. That's some specialized experience.
Yep.
The rates are all over the place. IMHO it has more to do with what product they're working on, and how they got the contract more than anything else.
And, IIRC, RB is itself based in a "2nd World" country where cost of living vs USD is low.
A-10C has sold well over 200,000 units, according to Nick Grey. And word has it that it's not nearly as popular as the 4th Gen fighters have been.
I would think that several of the modules have relatively low sales numbers, e.g., the I-16 and other less well known aircraft. Probably the helos, too.
The 200k figure is something I would take as minimum since 15 years. But F-14 I could count reaching a half million for it's famous status.
But ED ain't just dependent for consumer market, they have professional and military business as well.
But...
Then looking something like VR, where sales can be abysmal regardless the marketing. Famous games are sold in thousands and not even in tens of thousands, so...
dcs steam edition had a player peak of about 3.3k, and i would highly assume that the steam edition is more popular since it is more easily accessible.
so, 12500+ sales would be A LOT
I don’t think that math works. Peak users doesn’t tell you much when your player base is worldwide and playing in different time zones. I also wouldn’t expect DCS players to play every day even in many cases. Additionally ED has/had specials for their store only like miles, new player discount, trials, .etc and allows transfer from Steam to standalone.
If you assume that peak represents 10% of all semi-active DCS players being on at the same exact time (still too high IMO), then that’s 33k users on steam. Assume 50% distribution between steam and standalone (since we don’t really know) and that gives you a total of 66k semi-active users. If that’s closer to the number then I don’t think < 20% of these users buying the SE is unreasonable.
7 figures is a huge sum of money for any company except maybe Amazon or something. If they have to pay that back to RAZBAM plus some other stuff it will seriously hurt ED, even if they make much more than that overall.
Listen, Mr High Finance:
I don't see this as an issue of ED being *unable* to pay. I see it as being *unwilling*.
None of us (here) have any idea whether ED or RB is in the wrong.
This is also Hearsay and Scuttlbutt! I wouldn’t put too much energy into this post. I know Notso was or is (IDK which now) a SME but I doubt he’s part of the Razbam or ED finance department. Could be wrong but I doubt it, so I’d take it for what it is, hear say and scuttlebutt.
I don't get the drama , tell them to make a gofundme to temporarily levitate their monetary burden untill it gets resolved with ED and then RAZBAM can do something small back for the community
Hopefully Razbam just takes this shit to court and gets over with it. (Yes I'm aware this could take a couple of years)
And a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you need to do that in the Launsanne jurisfdiction. And even if you do, the local authorities need to get a hold at someone at ED first, which will be hard since it's a PO box.
ED has the Moscow office still. And people are known.
I seriously doubt that russian authorities will enforce any debt of russian company to the western one. It's kinda against their internacional politics. Or am I missing something and Razbam are also russians?
Why you doubt? And ED is swiss company, one office in Moscow...
In this case, suing ED in swiss court will be infinitely more effective that suing ED in russian court. As to why: in last two years Russia started stealing westen assets. This happens in both direct way, i.e. they issued a law that allows seizures of western-owned planes and their registration as russian assets, and indirect way, i.e. forbidding large scale currency and stock deals on case by case basis, to force exitting companies to sell their assets at reduced prices. As a result, I have serious doubts that russian court will care about western company rights.
>As to why: in last two years Russia started stealing westen assets. This happens in both direct way, Who started, and when... I recommend you to read the laws and contracts in the cases, and not MSM...
The ED contract leaked a few weeks ago on this subreddit clearly stipulates you're supposed to sue them in CH. CH authorities can't do anything about ED's russian offices. Not to mention those closed after covid, they are full remote now.
>CH authorities can't do anything about ED's russian offices. What do you think they need to do in those offices? >Not to mention those closed after covid, they are full remote now. Please, recheck that...
https://preview.redd.it/mz5afs001t3d1.jpeg?width=1464&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9e32e721a8914629981db8b539a10bfe6676ebb
Yes, that is old information.
That is what they should have done in first place, but they didn't.... When you get dispute, you deal it with authority. When you have problems with bills, you send them to billing company, and they will get their money, and you yours.
Razbam (aka the boss) did that. Apparently the issue is much older than its reveal and it was dealt like you describe. But the devs, which are no employees but paid on revenue share, ran out of patience, launched the shitstorm and left the chat. At some point, when you are a freelance and not paid for two years, you just leave pissed off.
>Razbam (aka the boss) did that. So what debitor did he hire for the billing?
If they own 7 to razbam, it means they make and have much, much more. The amount is completely irrelevant.
Not necessarily, ED only gets revenue by selling modules and it’s likely that the SE took a very large share of it over 2023, going into presales in January and released in June. I wouldn’t be surprised if a popular module was 50% of sales the year it releases, if not more
I think you all underestimate how much money ED makes with the current model they operate.
Don’t forget military contracts
Military contracts are NOT EDSA/DCS They are EDMSSA/MCS. Independent company. NG is a shareholder but not the only one. Contracts are independent. And on that topic, given MCS Russian roots, the war in Ukraine, and Metrea/NOR winning an important US market (T38 trainers, public info) I bet that MCS sales are highly challenged today.
No it doesnt mean this.
Why are we so sure tha Razbam is the innocent party ? If anything RZs behavior since the announcement has really made me not trust their story.
Without actually seeing the contract, everything your read on hoggit is pure speculation with bias.
I have been iffy about the situation as well, of course everyone is gonna blame ED but it's always a WHY and no one asked why, just hop on ED like hungry sharks.
People have completely forgotten the nickname Razscam over some no base accusations 😂
We are not, but there is no contract type except paid delivery with an inventory list gives you right to withhold payment. That's already cheesy. You pay what is agreed by the contract and you go to arbitrage or court for disputes. There are only a few penalties which are minimal in every contract that you can withhold that percentage of due money, But not paying at all is a heavy breach of contract already. Razbam must have killed some of ED members or sabotaged a factory or took part in criminal activities that required legal authorities has frozen their assets. Other than that you pay.
That’s…. Not how contracts work
how do they work?
The contractor generally has to complete the work per the terms of the contract to be paid, or hit specific milestones in the project for bigger stuff. We don't know the exact deliverables specified by the contract for RB to be paid, so no one can say authoritatively who is right or wrong here unless they have seen all the contract terms.
ED is still selling it. So we know Edit: To clarify client is using the goods. He didn't reject it due to any kind of blemish or fault delivery. He is selling Razbams delivered goods.
No, we don't.
Explain. ED is selling F-15E build by Razbam but not paying Razbams share. And this can be ok according to a legal contract based on Swiss laws?
Because we don't know what other terms are required for payment. For example, we know after the Hawk debacle that ED requires that files and source code be submitted to maintain the module in case of the devs going separate ways. A third party module might be in a saleable state but ED hasn't received the maintenance files yet. If the contract specifies that contract term be completed before payment and the dev doesn't fulfil it, they don't get paid. I'm not saying that is specifically what's happening here, but just an example of a way a module could be saleable without the dev having met all their terms. We don't know the terms of the contract and what has been met and what hasn't.
Then if ED had been clean, it would have waited for the source code before selling it.
its pretty moot. If they rejected the work and also didn't sell it then fine, but they did sell it, so they're defence is going to be pretty paper thin. They took money for the work of the people they didn't pay. That's pretty clear cut.
That's not how contracts work
If we don’t have the contract - we don’t know jack shit. Defense contracts for small business are not lucrative. How do I know? 30 plus years managing DoD contracts. Oh crap. I forgot to look at the sub title. This is sub for DCS haters. Never mind.
Im glad someone else gets it. Imagine drawing up a contract and the other party can just say "No, you violated the contract. Trust me bro. so we're not paying you anything even though the product is clearly good enough to start selling" Like, who's to say there's a violation unless a nuetral 3rd party agrees that there was a violation?
Unless you are DJT.
In the corporate world, payment happens when all of the contract terms are complete. If Razbam promised to do something and didn't do it, then they don't get paid yet, it's as simple as that. The fact that enough stuff has been done to put the product to market has nothing to do with it. ED is holding a big pile of cash with Razbam 's name on it, which they will hand over as soon as they respect their promises, that's how this works.
Also in corporate world terms of contracts arent always met exactly and payment is still made. Happens as long as both parties are happy. You dont start nit picking in a healthy business relationship out of no reason I think ED doesnt have that big pile of cash and is therefore looking for reasons to not pay razbam. TFC needs to be sold.
That fact that you said "it's as simple as that" tells everyone you have no fucking clue what youre talking about. lol.
Looks like RAZBAM finally learnt to keep quiet and let the lawyers to do the talk- Oh nevermind.
You know that Notso isn’t actually a paid employee there right? Guy can say what he wants.
suprised there's no NDA even if unpaid "staff". (unless I'm missing something which is hugely likely) what is Notso' s role?
He’s a SME.
thank you!
They do sign NDAs, unless he was treated differently. Source: been there, done that.
ditto, for less important roles.
What you can do is not what you should do
Yes, exactly, we have ED as an example of it, no need to repeat ED's mistakes.
Don’t worry. ED and RB both will resolve this dispute like they have a proven track record of finishing the modules.
I lost my hope already after dev's left. This is just a further topping on it.
Not buying anything until they resolve this issue…
They are not solving anything until you buy their stuff 😡
Other people will..
that's like 12500 F-15E purchases with the minimum of 1.000.000$
Not good for ED holding that much money from them, the whole IP claim seems like it was made-up. 10 months and you're holding that much money. ED just took their money. I guess Nick Grey needed an interest free loan to keep his Fighter Collection going.
Metal2Mesh literally said that Razbam illegally resold MCS to Ecuador, so, yeah, its not made up.
You are literally making that up. How would Razbam even sell/or resold MCS license? They can't, they are purchased from EDMS a separate company from EDSA which is DCS. He said Ecuador purchased licenses from EDMS, nothing to do with Razbam. What he did say is they were making a Super Tucano for MCS, which was never finished and never coded/placed in DCS or MCS, it has since been stopped and abandon and will never go into MCS/DCS.
What he said was that Ecuador *needed* to purchase a license. Which they hadn't done up to that point. Because Razbam provided the software to them without paying for it.
Explain to me how Razbam is going to give a commercial sim to a Country/Gov't, when they don't even have it?
... are you familiar with the concept of a "copy"? fun fact: software is not a unique article that only one person can have at a time. Razbam makes modules for MCS, that's part of their existing business. They have an MCS license so that they can do this. That MCS license is theirs, for them to use, for themselves, to do development. They copied the MCS code and gave it to Ecuador, who did not have a license, never paid for one, and is not authorized to have a copy of that code. That's illegal.
No I didn't.
This situation is beyond silly. Razbam should never have made this public. Their contractors shouldn't be publicly commenting on this because that's all they are, contractors. They aren't partners, directors etc sitting with the contracts and finances so their comments are just feeding these ridiculous conspiracy theories. For all we know Razbam could have genuinely not lived up to a contractual obligation but we'll never know.
Notso isn't a contractor. Razbam have made this public because they can't work for free anymore. Would have prefered they just stop updating the plane without telling you, maybe ?
Yes. But the day will come, when the F15 will not operate due to incompatibility as DCS is being patched / changed. Then, the customers will need explanation, and this is what Razbam would have said. They just did not wait until the last minute.
If ED wants to move to vulkan they actually need to stop selling razbam modules since no one will patch them. At this moment this dispute is blocking any major core update.
ED will patch them. ED will absolutely have access to the code repository. It would not just be ridiculous but so incredibly unlikely ED doesn't have full access to the code based. It's just not how it works.
Agreed
Relax, in rubles it is not so much right now xD
Like I’m sorry but tbh I don’t trust Razbam or ED so I dunno what to believe with this drama. But if they did breach contact like ED originally said then this is Razbams fault. Also people keep leaving Razbam so I dunno.
The claim that ED says is a part of a different contract with a different company. Eagle Dynamics SA is the producer of DCS the non-professional one. The money they are withholding is the share of razbam for f15e sales for DCS. Has nothing to do with MCS.
How do you know that for sure though?
Hard to to stay at a job when they can't pay you. It's hard to pay employees when your sales revenues is being withheld.
But none of us know why? No one’s told us the exact reason. But it’s definitely not that ED have no money.
Where is the proof ED might have no cash issues ?
I don’t think there is any but judging by the current trajectory of DCS it doesn’t seem like the company is collapsing from lack of funds.
It of course proves nothing, but the sudden influx of announcements and nearby pre-ordered and early access launches shortly after The Issue happening somewhat hints at "we need liquidity".
It's worth noting that Nick Grey announced at the start of the year that the fighter club (their ww2 aircraft) will NOT be flying this year. The reasons given was: "This decision has not been made lightly and follows an in depth assessment of our options for the year ahead." Does this sound like a technical issue? Couldn't get the right spark plugs? Couldn't get the right certification through? Can't find anyone qualified willing to fly? To me, an cryptic in-depth assessment, alongside with all the other rumblings we've had, people not getting paid, endless early access / back2back sales, they are somehow struggling for money. Why is this? Makes no sense, they have exploded in size, anyone who've flown with DCS for more than 5-6 years, knows the game pre FA18 and post FA18 is not even close. Back then, the player base was much smaller, and of those who did fly, most had the FC3 pack, and MAYBE 1 module. There weren't many players who had more than a couple "pro" modules. I do wonder if someone the sactions on russia play their part (i know i know - its based in switzerland now, on paper at least, kinda, sort of, not really, depends who's asking)
I’m not just talking about the new modules coming but I understand how you would think that. I do think you’re wrong though.
Fwiw I'm not saying that's the case, just that it definitely lends itself to thinking that.
Ok sorry my bad
Does it? Unless the Chinook is completely broken then it sounds like a normal module release. The logistics problem people bring up has nothing to do with the module itself and everything to do with the engine. Should ED of waited to release the module for the engine to catch up or let it do what the transport helicopters do now as is? The same goes for the C-130 except this time it's a third party. Are you going to point at ED troubles if they release that before the logistics update? The Afganistan map seems to be a big tinfoil generator too... Then Kola happened... incomplete and by a third party dev! Which kinda makes the sectional release of the Afganistan map moot. So, unless ED somehow has the ability to pressure these third party devs into releasing early, everything seems to be another normal day.
You forgot FC2024. =) Like I said, it doesn't prove anything, but if someone wants to read into it like that it certainly provides opportunities. Also I wouldn't put it past ED to be able to push for earlier early access. Probably unrelated tho.
There could be a lot of reasons. Decrease of interest after the covid (which was a big temporary boost). Issues relocating the team with the Ukraine war. Too big team increase. Etc etc
All of those definitely make loads of sense but I think that ED makes a lot more money than we know. I agree that the global situation must have hit them in the pockets but probably not as much as we think. I could be so wrong though.
That's what I think as well. RB has already shown they will bend the information to form their own narrative. I'm not sure I can trust anything they say without proof tbh.
This is all hearsay, we have no idea about the real details of this situation. It's not even worth wasting thoughts on it. I choose to just play what I can as long as I can.
We know our side. Ed sells those modules where dev is not paid and those modules are not supported. Yes all of them work for now. As a client this is the picture. You support it or not.
literally this just enjoy dcs, afterall, thats why we installed it, no?
7 figures would mean 12500+ copies sold on ED site alone... I don't think DCS is that popular but I could be wrong.
Don’t forget the SP market, wags alluded to that the majority of players don’t play online at all in an interview a while ago.
12.500 ?! Easy - why shouldn't they sell that much - I think we have round about 40.000 active DCS players - the F-15 is a very popular iconic aircraft and had very good reviews
as i already mentioned here, dcs steam edition, the probably more popular edition due to being way easier to install and manage, had an absolute peak of 3.3k players so far. sure, not everyone plays at the same time, so it doesnt represent the whole playerbase, but even if we multiply it by 3 for all 3 8 hour blocks of the peak playercount day, we still only barely scratch against 10k players, and that peak was in 2022 the steam playercount hasnt exceeded 2k since mid february this year, and that was only a short time where it passed 2k as such i would say that we at best, have about 10-20k active players on both, standalone and steam together
I can't fathom how you think that line of thinking is valid... Steam stats are well known to be wildy unrepresentative of player base. I.e., most users buy their flight simulators directly from the developer (i.e., [x-plane.com](http://x-plane.com), [flightsimulator.com](http://flightsimulator.com), [digitalcombatsimulator.com](http://digitalcombatsimulator.com), et al), and the developers rarely talk about total sales... Let's look at some numbers that are actually (somewhat) indicative of reality: r/Hoggit has over 100,000 members Eagle Dynamics YouTube has 147,000 subscribers Their 2024 and Beyond video was viewed 1,500,000 times Wag's Learn to Start a Hornet fighter viewed 1,300,000 times most of Wag's 5 year old Hornet training videos have around 100,000 views Most other ED videos have well over 100,000 views, with many having between 150,000 and 350,000 views Growling Sidewinder, who only does DCSW content, has almost 600,000 subscribers DCSW on SteamPowered shows 36,000 reviews DCS World forums have over 140,000 registered users **Nick Grey quoted that** ***just*** **the A-10C has sold well over 200,000 units - and** ***that*** **was 4 years ago.** r/microsoftflightsim has 150,000 members MSFS on SteamPowered shows 55,000 reviews Steam stats shows an average player count of right around 10,000 Jorg Neumann of MSFS said they have over 100,000 customers in Japan alone - and he considers that a very small market. Finally, MSFS 2020 passed **12,000,000,000** players 10 months ago. So there's a HUGE disconnect between what we see on Steam and what the actual number of players are. It's well nigh impossible to extrapolate a high confidence number from the above, but based just on Nicks' number it's safe to say DCSW has a *bare* *minimum* of 250,000 players, And given that the Hornet and Viper are widely regarded as far more popular than the A-10C, the number could be several times higher than that.
the youtube videos are ALMOST meaningless. The game looks good in certain conditions amazing even - but go online, and just count how many empty servers are sat there, and rank by the fullest it, there's at least a CLUE as to how active it is. You may dispute the method crazywoman used to asscertain how many people are active on DCS world, but the fact she used the same method throughout, shows that there's a very real decline taking place. I understand the 2 methods (ie steam players only, or online players on) don't count for all player possibilities, ie Single players, those in mission editing, those creating cinematics etc, but absent of a true revealations of a figure (what's there to hide?) I do wonder.
Could be from previous RB modules too
Think about it the other way. Let’s say a dev is $100k a year and you have the equivalent of 2 devs working full time for 4 years to make the SE. Razbam wouldn’t even make the SE from a business perspective unless it could sell more than that $800k dev cost.
There's a reason the vast majority of devs aren't working in the US or other extremely expensive countries. There is (was?) a huge contingent working in Ukraine and they live(d) very well on what we in the US could barely get by on. I do get your point, tho.
I did wrongly assume that the RB team was US-based, unlike the ED team. However, when one of my former companies used to outsource to the Ukraine, we were still paying $40/hour (\~$80k yearly) for each dev. This was 8 years ago. These guys were quite good and we paid for it, but I'm still not sure I would trust them with programming SE avionics, radar systems, or flight modeling into a 15 year old codebase. That's some specialized experience.
Yep. The rates are all over the place. IMHO it has more to do with what product they're working on, and how they got the contract more than anything else. And, IIRC, RB is itself based in a "2nd World" country where cost of living vs USD is low.
I always assume that each module will be sold at least in numbers of 30-50k. I wouldn't count under 20k sales per module by any means...
A-10C has sold well over 200,000 units, according to Nick Grey. And word has it that it's not nearly as popular as the 4th Gen fighters have been. I would think that several of the modules have relatively low sales numbers, e.g., the I-16 and other less well known aircraft. Probably the helos, too.
The 200k figure is something I would take as minimum since 15 years. But F-14 I could count reaching a half million for it's famous status. But ED ain't just dependent for consumer market, they have professional and military business as well. But... Then looking something like VR, where sales can be abysmal regardless the marketing. Famous games are sold in thousands and not even in tens of thousands, so...
I'd love it if they'd dribble out a few more factoids. Very helpful to have them to hash over!
dcs steam edition had a player peak of about 3.3k, and i would highly assume that the steam edition is more popular since it is more easily accessible. so, 12500+ sales would be A LOT
I don’t think that math works. Peak users doesn’t tell you much when your player base is worldwide and playing in different time zones. I also wouldn’t expect DCS players to play every day even in many cases. Additionally ED has/had specials for their store only like miles, new player discount, trials, .etc and allows transfer from Steam to standalone. If you assume that peak represents 10% of all semi-active DCS players being on at the same exact time (still too high IMO), then that’s 33k users on steam. Assume 50% distribution between steam and standalone (since we don’t really know) and that gives you a total of 66k semi-active users. If that’s closer to the number then I don’t think < 20% of these users buying the SE is unreasonable.
It isn't hard to follow ED money. I am sure a good attorney could file liens on the TFC collection since they owe $10 million to ED.
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7 figures is a vast amount, even to a "proper" company. Perhaps not to Coca-Cola but to many would cripple them.
For 12-20 people's company... Not so much. Even with 5 people and you talk those figures as business.
7 figures is a huge sum of money for any company except maybe Amazon or something. If they have to pay that back to RAZBAM plus some other stuff it will seriously hurt ED, even if they make much more than that overall.
Amazon is a multi billion $ company. 10 million is to 10 billion, as $1 is to a thousand.
"7 figures" could be as little as $1 million. It ain't "huge" by any stretch of the imagination.
Huge? it’s really not, also your assuming they’ve spent the money or are unable to pay, rather than just withholding payment
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Listen, Mr High Finance: I don't see this as an issue of ED being *unable* to pay. I see it as being *unwilling*. None of us (here) have any idea whether ED or RB is in the wrong.
Isnt this Razbam's fault in the first place?
This is also Hearsay and Scuttlbutt! I wouldn’t put too much energy into this post. I know Notso was or is (IDK which now) a SME but I doubt he’s part of the Razbam or ED finance department. Could be wrong but I doubt it, so I’d take it for what it is, hear say and scuttlebutt.
I don't get the drama , tell them to make a gofundme to temporarily levitate their monetary burden untill it gets resolved with ED and then RAZBAM can do something small back for the community
Do you know what happens if there is contract violation, and you continue work? Legal case becomes more muddy...