I understand the frustration. There is no excuse other than that Asobo messed up bigtime and they should make a statement towards the community. They were very comvincing in their marketing strategy selling their preorders. And now they went silent.
However…let this be a lesson for the future: do NOT pre order!! Wait it out…
Im still flying 2020. No way im gonna tough 2024 for the next few month. I want to buy software that works and im glad i did not pre order.
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The size of the organisation is really not my concern. The actual underlying issues causes the problem(s) is also not my concern. I do not care.
The simple fact is the organisation in question has received payment for a digital product. Their delivery service to make that product available to it’s customers has failed.
As you rightly point out, the first thing I want to see is a clear communication *banner at the top of the forum) acknowledging people were/are experiencing difficulties completing the installation process. Accompanied by a very quick and straight forward declaration they are investigating and will update with more information as soon as possible.
I am not happy with this situation, it is NOT ok. Beyond knowing the client is smaller and more data should be streamed I am struggling to comprehend why something seems to be so drastically amiss. Clearly though, something does not seem quite right even allowing for the high demand on servers.
That said, my first thought is not “I must therefore expect or demand compensation”
What I want to know within a reasonably short time-frame that issues have been identified, action is being taken, and when the problem is expected to be resolved.
If that time frame is unreasonably long, then an only then would it be reasonably for a goodwill gesture to be offered. e.g. the next aircraft(s) that were due to be paid content be made free to all. Or alternatively being able to request a full refund so I may at a later date revisit to see if the problems have indeed been resolved when I may again purchase the software.
Asobo does not operate or control the servers that deliver content or permit users to log in - Microsoft does.
Be thankful if were able to download it. I paid for Deluxe 2024 two weeks ago in MS Store and it does not appear there - it only appears in Game Pass where I would have to pay another $20 to get it.
Quite often when Lego releases a new really hot item their servers regularly crash out. When you get in, it’s backordered, when Target has it in stock. If they have an exclusive limited gift with purchase it’s not unusual for the big ticket item to go immediately into ‘out of stock’ status(where backorder gets you the threshold gift-out of stock does not). Then they limit the GWP to one per household or account, sometimes running out before you can backorder it. And THEN you see scalpers a few weeks later online with 50+ of those GWP’s. Fun times. And that’s from the most respected largest toy company in the world. Trying to buy some $700 set and there’s a big minifigure saying ‘sorry’ at the screen.
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The entitlement element is really the attitude of expect “compensation” which for most people would translate to a sum of funds being reimbursed for a perceived loss. At this point there is a problem that is certainly delaying the ability for people to obtain what they have purchase of course that is not right and needs to be resolved ASAP. There is no “loss” at this point as such - if this goes on for days or weeks that is slightly different, it would then be reasonable to perhaps expect a goodwill gesture of DLC at a later date.
Right now, for those among us who are deeply dissatisfied ought to be asking for a full refund and in doing so giving up on 2024, at least for the time being. They would then be free to wait until the problems have been resolved and repurchase the sim at a later date.
MSFS 2020 still works if you have it installed, so not as if there are no options…
Just chatted with Microsoft employee on their site. He said his family has been playing it all day! Employees must get priority over us paying customers. He said he would refund me my money but I got it through Best Buy so I’m SOL according to him. He said that’s why I should always buy from Microsoft directly.
t’s pretty standard industry practice to get compensated for outages for things like your TV/internet going out, I think that is a better analogy here.
Really, never happened to me and I don’t expect to live long enough to see it happen!
This happens to almost EVERY game these days. Just give it 24hours and hopefully it will be resolved. I understand your point but people and game devs make mistakes or have unforeseen problems on launch that they are working very hard on it this very moment. Just need a little patience.
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Imagine if it was accepted that EVERY game will be given away for free if there are launch issues…
We would have almost no games, but boy would they launch 
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The size of an company should complain about online services capability.
A banner telling that “there is a problem” is an awfull way to comunicate.
A compensation to the fans ara a nice way to minimize the shame of this launch.
The game did not work on release day (load screens 97% and 0%), so I gave it a day and today 20th, it still would not work - not much further forward, I choose free-flight and all I see is a static aerial map or it crashes to desktop. I contact Microsoft, they tell me how to request a refund, I do that, but a refund is denied because they say I have a limited number of refunds each year and have exceeded that number…I have not had any refunds!
So I call back Microsoft, they say the website is final and will not discuss a refund. I made the point in my refund request, that when I pre-ordered, at no point was it mentioned I was paying for a non-functional product…which clearly failed to influence Microsoft.
Not impressed with paying £199.99 for a non-functioning game, then being refused a refund for (& I am being generous here) spurious reasons. I have to just hope they can build an functional game at some point in the future…I keep telling myself, this is the last time I pre-order and I should stick to it.
I dont even have the option to refund it on my Microsoft account. I have not even fly for 1 minute because the sim keep crashing everytime i press the “Ready to fly” button. This hilarious ridiculous
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hmm,i ask for refund,and it was very fast 
https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/subscriptions-billing/buy-games-apps/refund-orders
but i did via german webside,Xbox Support
so give it a try 
Than don’t start pre-sales before you are up and running, making a boot load of money even before you put your product on the market… If a company does that, than you are entitle to be ■■■■■■ of when it is not working day one… Like in the real world. If a product or service do not live up to the agreement there is a penalty or fine to the contractor that do not uphold the agreement. why should this be any different?
It’s a very poor show. Almost bait and switch compared to what they’ve been showcasing for months.I think it’s perfectly reasonable to request a refund for a product that is clearly not up to scratch and probably won’t be for months, if 2020s SU fiascos are anything to go by. It was SU10 before I came back from XPlane.
Microsoft are used to building high volume, high performance distributed systems and operating them well. They should be asking serious questions as to how this failed so badly. We call it “thundering herd” in software design when everyone comes at once. You design around that problem even if it’s a temporary state until dropping into business as usual. It has me worried as just how much of this game has extreme dependencies on streaming and there’s evidence that shows the fallback option is akin to FSX in terms of fidelity when things don’t go well.
Not good
I too was there for the Simcity fiasco. I think the woman in charge resigned or something?
Anyways, I think a small piece of free content might be in order, like maybe 1 free custom airport of our choosing or something like that.
EDIT: In fact, the Simcity fiasco was almost the same, due to online requirements. This from PC Magazine article:
there wasn’t enough server space to go round. Players were met with frequent crashes, extreme latency, exceedingly long load times, disconnections, and delayed downloads. Swathes were unable to get into the game at all, left endlessly hanging in the launch menu
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One day later - a large number of people haven’t yet got to the main menu.
Aging poorly so far!
28 hours after release i am still unable to start a flight. I managed to reach the menus - thats all.
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