(Update: CS admits mistake) Captain Sim faces huge community backlash as it tries to claim ownership of user-created liveries
Update! – In a short statement on the company’s forums, Captain Sim admitted the mistake, apologized for all the “mess”, and promised to allow all freeware deliveries to be freely distributed. A repaint kit will also be made available starting this Monday, May 24th. An honest apology, or damage control after the massive negative feedback?
Captain Sim’s arrival to the new Microsoft Flight Simulator is turning into an absolute disaster. And it’s not like the studio has anyone to blame but itself. After releasing a half-baked recreation of the Boeing 777, which was disappointingly received by simmers, Captain Sim is now going after livery creators who have shared their work outside of the in-house ACE utility, claiming that their work is actually owned by Captain Sim, according to their copyright policy. How crazy is that?
Flightsim.to, the popular repository of addons and mods for MSFS, even got a legal takedown from CaptainSim urging the platform to remove all freeware liveries that were made available there. Then, astonishingly, Captain Sim picked up on those liveries, somehow “reworking” them in order to “fix them”, and posted them on ACE without any credit to the original creators. Captain Sim even went ahead and blamed creators for “posting their defective art all over the Internet”. Ouch.
So, at this point in time, we have a once-respected third-party developer making community-created liveries available through its own tools, without crediting the original creators, claiming that those liveries are actually owned by Captain Sim. The irony here is uncanny, since Captain Sim has just released an aircraft that is mostly Asobo’s code (the 747 systems) wrapped in a 777 external model.
Clearly, Captain Sim is working really hard to kill its reputation in the flight simulation world. So far, in just a few days, they are nearly accomplishing that goal with great success! They seem oblivious to the problem and have yet to respond to all the backlash. What we are getting is some nasty back-and-forths on Captain Sim’s forums, in a thread where they explain the thought process behind their decisions. That thread has since been cleansed from many critical posts.
In the meantime, there is now a poop livery for the 777. A hilariously immature creation that perfectly symbolizes what is going on here, and how many users are reacting to such a hostile behavior from Captain Sim.
Stuart Payne
I have been a flight simmer for over 15 years. I’ve seen devs come and go faster more than wall street bankers in this time but here’s what I have also seen.. every single one of them listened to the community. I mean jeez Xplane is built on its community that’s why it’s been so successful. The streamers, simmers and gamers among us all will all have a simple message to captain sim. Unfortunately With their head clearly so far up their own …. they aren’t going to hear the message. In true community fashion though I’m sure they will get it when they are heading out the door thinking where did it go so wrong.
KEVIN OCONNOR
message to captain sim make hay before PMDG 777 arrives 🙂
CaptVirtual
I mean, what did they expect. MSFS is a new platform/market to create a whole new range of products, a new avenue of long-term income, yet like the selfish profit only focussed outfit they are they really really screwed it treating the community like suckers. CaptainSim you have lost many customers for a long time.
Nakia Minors
I have the Captiansim 777 for FSX and was enjoying it (not as much as the PMDG version though) enough to consider taking the hit and purchasing the MSFS version with hopes that they’d make good with their customers later. Now what do I think….HELL NO!!!!! take it and shove it.
Happy Gilmore
Captain Sim website looks like it got made in early 2000s 😞
Leeland
Gave CaptainSim the boot way back in 2012. Purchased their 707, 727, 737, and 767 only to deal with all the imperfections (major systems/flight model stuff) which they would promise to fix in some future release, but never would because they were on to the next aircraft (777 at the time) and you were just left with malfunctioning payware for which you had paid a premium.
Years before internet censoring became all the rage, CS was already well versed in the art on their forum, editing and/or deleting any criticism of their products and/or complaints about not resolving major issues, as they had promised in the very same forum.
They had beautiful models/liveries with some neat animations and other features, but without the fundamentals it was just form over function. Someone should hire the artists there, but totally avoid their systems folks.
It’s hilarious to read this all these years later, but absolutely no surprise. To the contrary, it’s totally in character for the cretins that run CaptainSim.