No, At least not on my end
I’m disappointed to see that the 737-100 is still available to purchase and deceive customers. I’m at a point now that I won’t buy from MP, yes including MP Exclusive aircraft, until I see the product removed and a change in their quality assurance process. I hope others consider doing the same
I certainly hope that big name devs, especially those that have contracts with Asobo/Microsoft, write a joint letter to them expressing their frustrations. Obviously what’s been said and done already hasn’t been enough.
Xbox users have nowhere else to go so that’s unlikely to happen. A few boycotts won’t change policy there are too many users. Sad but true.
Just stick to the good devs. We shouldn’t harm them because of this rogue dev.
I might miss out on the Phenom 300 from one of the best developers out there but until I see real actions from MS/Asobo I will not buy a single thing from MP. And by real action I mean not only removal of this garbage but an explanation how it happened in the first place or a plan going forward to not let this happen again. I hope this happens but I’m not expecting it.
I know this will not change much since console players unfortunately don’t have a choice but it will make a difference to me on personal level.
I won’t be purchasing the Working Title Praetor due to the terrible response to this by Microsoft. The Forum Moderators/Community Managers’ silence hasn’t been great either, but I can’t fault them. If they’re not getting anything to relay back from MS, their hands are tied. Can’t shoot the messenger.
Hopefully they come back to us when they get an update from the marketing team.
That’s because the moderators are volunteers from the community who moderate the forums, not Microsoft or Asobo employees, and so are not privy to any discussions being held within eiher company about this matter. We don’t get updates on private discussions about any internal matter such as this (nor should we - it’s not our business).
My Personal Comment & Observation:
As the Community Managers have mentioned many times in various topics on these forums, they share information when they have it and are able to do do. IMO, this issue - and any statement about it - is not something that they have the authority to decide upon by themselves - if at all.
I’d only expect a response from the CMs once a final decision has been made on how to address the issue, which might take a while, as it probably involves multiple department / groups within Microsoft, such as marketing, legal, Xbox, various executives, etc. etc. , and once the CMs have been given the go-ahead from their manager to release a statement that has been approved by the appropriate groups involved.
Chewy is paid by Microsoft and as far as I know all top moderators are. Otherwise they would never be allowed to make official statements like they do now.
Mathijs
@TheFalconOne
I can only speak for myself, but I’m not getting paid to moderate the forums, and, AFAIK, none of the othe volunteer moderators are being paid either. There is no categorization within the Volunteer Moderators group, so no “top” moderators or anything like that. We have a very democratic system here. 
The Community Managers are Microsoft employees, so presumably are receiving a salary from the company.
Hello @TheFalconOne,
None of the forum moderators are paid employees of either Microsoft or Asobo. As @SmotheryVase665 noted in his post above, they are all helpful volunteers from our player community who assist us in keeping the forums running smoothly by responding to posts flagged by users, moving errant topics to the correct subforum, and other similar forum admin tasks. We are incredibly grateful for their assistance and dedication.
The Community Managers (that is to say me, @Jummivana, and @Chewwy94) are separate from the moderators. The CMs are indeed paid full-time employees of the MSFS Team. Any statements you see from any of us (unless we preface it by saying that we’re only sharing our own personal thoughts and we’re not speaking on behalf of the team) can be treated as official statements.
SmotheryVase’s post above was not an official statement. He even caveated his post to say “My Personal Comment & Observation”.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
5 Likes
Ahhh, I stand corrected! Thanks.
True, and I shouldn’t have lumped them in with the CM’s. I completely understand that you are not privy to Microsoft/Asobo internal comms. Apologies for doing so.
I correct my statement to be more clear - it is disappointing to hear the deafening silence from the CM’s on this topic. To me, this gives me a total green light to upload a product to the marketplace using AI generated product page images and rake in some extra income from naive users. Is this correct?
@SN0WY33
No problem - many folks don’t know about the difference in roles the volunteer moderators & Community Managers have on this forum (this topic describes the various roles / flairs)
Again, My Personal Comment & Observation :
It’s only been three days or so since this the first post was created. My experience as a manager in my professional life was that it could take weeks to get multiple groups within a large company aligned on on issue such as this - especially if the legal department was involved. Our corporate lawyers were loath to make quick decisions!
So I’d not characterize this as a “deafening silence” from the CMs, as:
- a) It’s only been 3 days - if it were 3 months, then your comment would have more weight (IMO), and
- b) The CMs might not be allowed to even write a statement themselves (though they could be in the review loop). They may end up just relaying a statement to the community that has been written and approved from a department - e.g. legal - elsewhere in the company, once given approval to do so.
As for a “green light” for others “to upload a product to the marketplace using AI generated product page images”: Since I have no insight to the ingestion process into the marketplace, I have no idea if any measures to prevent this might have already been put in place, and would not expect the CMs to talk about this for the same reasons that I’ve mentioned above.
As someone who bashes their head against their desk every day working customer service, I don’t envy the position you moderators put yourselves into voluntarily, nor do I envy the Community Managers.
You guys run a tight ship here, and though I’m nobody, I appreciate it all the same.
But they have commented. Twice in this thread. That they have escalated it. There’s nothing more for them to say at this point.
If this were about the ongoing debate about user-defined “low quality” products in the marketplace, I would agree with you. I would understand it taking months to reach a conclusion about what bar to set about quality standards for marketplace ingestion. I would also understand it taking months to conduct an investigation about whether the reviews are being submitted by bots.
But IMO, this is a separate issue entirely. Yes, the product quality is low, the reviews are likely botted, but this is more about the fact that all of the product images are undeniably AI generated. This shouldn’t be up for debate. The product should be immediately removed.
This product being left up for sale completely undermines legitimate devs like PMDG and others.
I’ll echo the sentiment of FndrStrat06 that you guys are much appreciated here.
@BigCow74 the comments of the CM’s are effective silence. With all due respect to them, saying “we’ve escalated it” does absolutely nothing.
The job of the CMs is that of two-way communication between the dev team and our players. We listen to all the concerns of the flight sim community not only posted on these forums but also from many other platforms where players are discussing MSFS. We regularly send player feedback to the rest of the MSFS team and escalate trending issues as they emerge. We are also responsible for sharing updates, news, and information from the team to you, the players.
It is not the job of the CMs to create or enforce Marketplace store policies. As previously mentioned, we have sent the concerns raised in this thread to the appropriate Marketplace lead. That is the extent of what we can do. It’s not up to the CMs to determine how to respond to this issue.
If we later receive an update about this to share with you, we will do so in a timely manner as soon as we receive that information.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
6 Likes
Trust that there is no confusion about your role. The expectation is not to have CM’s click “Delete” on the Marketplace listing. But you are the representative of Flight Simulator when it comes to communicating with the community, given that Microsoft/Asobo employees (outside of you 3) do not participate on the forums. So when the kicking and screaming starts, you get the brunt of it. I do think it is disappointing that the CM’s cannot seem to acknowledge that AI generated product images are, in fact, problematic. Saying “we’ve escalated your concerns”, is much different than saying “AI generated product images are not in line with Microsoft Flight Simulator Marketplace policies and the listing never should have made it through the ingestion process, so the team is looking into it”, followed by an actual action of taking the listing down. But I’m sure you might just be bound and gagged to not say anything remotely negative or controversial about this software.
Again, I maintain that this sort of controversy, given its simplicity, can be easily and swiftly corrected without having to get approvals from 5 levels of Microsoft bureaucracy. I acknowledge that that’s not within your control.
They can’t do anything they haven’t already been approved to do. Complaints were heard and passed along. That’s what they’ve been approved to do, and they did it.
They can’t comment on the related larger issue of AI generated things because I’m sure that’s out of scope for them at the moment. They can’t tell you what will happen next because they probably don’t know. Even if they did, they probably wouldn’t be approved to say more than what they’ve already said. The fact of the matter is that they did their jobs. They reviewed feedback in this thread and passed it up the chain to the people who actually can decide how to take action.
I had to call my ISP immediately after rolling out of bed this morning because my internet was out and I need it to work. I didn’t endlessly complain to the poor representative who took my call, it’s not their fault. It’s also not even really their problem because they don’t have the training or company resources to fix it. They told me it was being fixed, and lo and behold, it was fixed a short time later.
Let them work on it now that you know you’ve been heard. Don’t make their lives more difficult than they are by continuing to complain. Yes, this whole thing is frustrating, but don’t take it out on the mods and CMs.