I hope your correct.
There is literally no new news to report here.
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The market is open, why shall it not be? Seems you are driven by the idea that the small devs have no chance because of the big ones with the big wallet which is not true 
They may have more easy ways to get the information they need but this doesn’t mean a small dev won’t be able to get to the same level.
Take FFX, SWS or Fenix as an example - they are also newcomers which are well appreciated by the community and have high quality products because they got the support of people working on or flying the aircraft they create. In such cases there is no need to spend $$$$ on documents.
Another example would be FlyByWire which don’t even sell their product(s).
I don’t think it’s a grey zone - if they don’t offer the product as being officially certified by/official partner with xxx it’s pretty fine to work around original documents and licenses. If something is available on public it’s also fine to use it. The rest is artistical freedom but the use of the brand and marketing name (btw a reason Bredok3D products exist…)
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A fair point Delta…
Edit: As I said previously and for the sake of a good sim, long may it continue.
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For me, the answer to this question is fairly straightforward. ATR worked with the devs meet their own objectives and the fact that the work might also benefit the sim community, probably couldn’t be lower on their list of priorities. The devs will hopefully have a different set of priorities and I’m confident they will, but only time will tell
The simulated ATR 42/72 was simply to help ATR to sell more of those aircraft and telling potential customers that their aircraft might fail is hardly going to improve their chances. Also, adding lots of detail that would probably add significantly to the delivery timescale and wouldn’t be used by them anyway, would not make much sense.
I think we’ll probably just need to accept that, but still hope that the devs can correct any issues and maybe, once ATR are happy, add further detail to the simulated aircraft…
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Really? They will be mighty disappointed in the results of their marketing strategy then, if the number of forum complaint-threads were the measure. Any prospective ATR-fleet buyer perusing these formus would take their hundreds of millions elsewhere!
According to Jorg, they were happy with the aircraft and would be using MSFS terminals, complete with the ATR42/72 at a sales event.
Perhaps we should stick to the OP’s stated wish for this not to turn into an “ATR bashing” thread?
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Hey, I’m not bashing the ATR. Don’t own it, not flown it. Have no opinion on it. Just questioning the idea that the ATR was developed by MS at the behest of ATR as a marketing tool. That they would use it as a marketing opportunity, sure.
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Maybe watch the latest twitch video from about 11:40mins in and hear what Jorg says about ATR’s presence at the Paris airshow, in June.
Watched it live, didn’t get the impression ATR commissioned the project.
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I’d be very surprised if they’ve committed time and resources to the project without getting something from the deal, even if it is possible that they’ve just done it solely for the benefit of flight simmers. 
Which isn’t quite the same thing. Of course, they get benefits and marketing value too. Its a collaboration. But I’d be very surprised if it was ATR as a company coming to MS with the proposal - a point that is very germane to this thread. I can see some of the smaller players in the aircraft manufacturing sector being the initiators. But not even a medium-sized player like ATR.
If you are a small dev, go knocking on a smaller door.
But legalities do matter. It’s a factor in what makes it to the market and in what condition. I get that it’s not a welcome answer for you, but acknowledging the actual market delivery conditions is a first step towards any potential remediation.
However, in this case, it’s a bigger problem than most consumers can influence. After all, their market is the real world, not the simulation community. So to that end, there will always be a dearth of certain types and brands because of those legalities, developer skill aside.
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I would love nothing more than a high-fidelity, officially supported, G700. But I shall not hold my breath due to the reality of the legalities.
It’d certainly be a shame if smaller developers started having to call their aircraft “Boings” or “Abrius”, to reduce the chances of legal action, when only the big developers get to produce licensed aircraft.
That would probably make an already tough challenge even tougher and could possibly lead to smaller developers either having to group together to get in on the act or folding. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
I’m pretty sure that when Asobo got the job they had a mindset to build a flying game. To me it seemed a lot like they had absolutely no idea of the flightsim franchise, of P3D, XPlane and DCS, of the flightsim community, of all the reputable addon companies around, of the hardware some people run. It was a game like… no idea… Zelda. I guess that they came in contact with reality hitting them like a TGV when the Alpha tests started. But everything before that was a game built around a beautiful world. Who knows what they told Ratheon? What they showed them? How many people were involved at Ratheon and who? An aeronautic engineer? Or a lawyer who had never cared about aviation and flightsim? We as pilots and/or experienced flightsimmers were shocked to see a G3X in a Kingair but if I asked you now about the driver’s cabin and layout of an E03/BR103 locomotive, how much do you know?
Asobo and Micosoft did the only sensible and correct thing and commited to it and that takes a LOT of courage. MS knew very well that MSFS would have had the same fate as MS Flight if they had continued it like it was released. Sure it wasn’t finished, it had been rushed out to use the Covid lockdowns for maximum commercial success but they could have taken the money and dropped it like FSX. But all of them accepted the challenge and have committed to build a great flightsim suitable for casuals and beginners just as for experienced simmers and pilots. That’s a huge task and they do well.
regarding the actual topic (and that you don’t need to be “that guy” :P…) I’m in two minds about the cheap “series” aircraft. On one hand they push a certain “low effort” mentality of some devopers off the market beating them with 1st party priviledges and even lower effort (I mean… the Orbx Fokker was probably one of the addons with the worst effort-to-hype ratio) but on the other hand it forces 3rd party developers to better quality in the long term. The fact that manufacturers don’t want to share their internal information anymore doesn’t even worry me that much. Eagle Dynamics has built fighter aircraft for years with very limited publicly available information. Civil flightsim devs will eventually do the same. There are many ways to gather information. And if you’re not allowed to call your product Cessna C172P it may be called “Bestdev 172”. The high fidelity “study level” airliners will probably remain in the known hands for a while, there are developers who have built relations and may get the chance to still get official data while they are large or reputive enough to even pay for this data (or already have them).
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Developers have done that in the past, and continue to do so. Personally, I’m grateful to those brave folks who invest so much time and effort, knowing that they’re one C&D away from having all that work negated. I’m also grateful to the companies who, while needing to protect their IP and brand, also recognize in some cases that going after small devs doesn’t net them anything, and thus turn a relative “blind eye” to potential encroachment. There is an ecosystem here, it’s just not well defined. As Matt pointed out, certain makers or brands are just a no-fly zone.
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At the same time it’s probably one thing for companies like Boeing or Airbus to shrug their shoulders at P3D or XP where there are maybe 20000 copies of their aircraft sold or to look at companies now selling copies of their intellectual property to a potential customer base of MSFS that has allegedly sold 10 million times. There is a) money to make and b) disaster predicted if someone makes a youtube video crashing an El Al 747 into Temple Mount… as an example.
I think you are completely wrong on that.
Joerg Neumann knew simming. He was just smart enough to know that you can sell orders of magnitude more copies of an “earth simulator” that has a flight sim component rather than the other way around. It was all very smartly designed and they thought of 3rd party support from the get go.
Not sure what your opinion is based on but there are plenty of interviews online to research the back story, if you are so inclined.
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Microsoft <> Asobo. I know the background.
The concept is one thing, the design another.