I guess if it’s legal obstacles outside of Asobo’s control there’s nothing much we can do (not that there was much we could do in the first place).
Right now there are threads on individual airplanes but usually by the time I get to them there’s 700 posts on a single autopilot bug or something like that. It makes it hard to tell if a plane is good overall or not.
Do you guys think a review thread on each add on might be useful? We could have a vote at the top with 5 star, 4 star, 3 star, etc and people could post their written reviews and nothing else. Or maybe we could have a simple “yes/no” vote at the top so people can tell globally if they should bother researching an add on any further. There’s no one reviewer I trust more than the wisdom of the crowd on here, but it’s often hard to weed it out in the airplane specific threads. We have a great top 10 thread going, so maybe we already have what we need, but it might be nice to hear opinions on specific aircraft on their own merits and not only in comparison to others.
The issue with these add ons is they keep changing to any review has to be “living”. For example I was trying to decide whether to buy the 170B and some reviews said it wouldn’t land on tundra tires while others said its electrical system wouldn’t boot up properly. Now these have all since been fixed and I got the plane and loved it but it would have been nice if there was a thread I could visit where that was obvious before I went down the rabbit hole.
This is not a win win. Tokens are evil.
It’s just not right to refund with a token.
You buy something at a store that’s not satisfying for whatever reason, and now you are stuck with the obligation to buy something else at the same store.
Depending on where you live, the legality of this might be even questionable.
Steam has set a fair rule for downloadable purchases and it works for everyone.
There are no excuses to not follow that standard.
Our best insurance, never be an early, ‘jumper’ as soon as a new software product gets released. Let other people test it and watch/read plenty of reviews before departing with hard-earned cash. If I recall correctly, JustFlight gave me a refund many years ago. Their policy now folllow’s that of most software developers, no refunds for software except boxed items.
I agree with this but the trouble with it is if the trend goes towards this for the majority then there are less and less early adopters and you are back at square one. For now though it’s certainly the sensible thing to do unless you are having it regardless.
I understand your point, and can only speak for myself.
The fact that I can’t “try before I buy” and have no recourse if I buy an unsatisfactory product, makes me more wary of being an early adopter. At that point it’s my tendency to impulse buy (again, that’s just me) being dampened, which for me leads to less purchases overall. Product reviews are sometimes very educational, and sometimes misleading - especially since my definition of a quality product seems to so often differ from others.
This isn’t a store in the traditional sense. You’re not buying a physical good. You don’t even own the software you’re buying. You’re buying a license agreement to use that software, which could be revoked at any time. You can’t sell your Marketplace purchase, trade it, or share it.
So to me, it’s much more like a carnival, amusement park, or similar entertainment service. You might pay an entrance fee and then buy tickets/tokens to go on various rides and play games while you’re there. If a ride is broken, or I don’t like it for some reason, I could spend my tokens elsewhere since I’m going to be there anyway. This is different than an online store that I might only ever buy one item from and never visit again, in which case, yeah, store credit would be a pretty lousy return policy.
That could be an issue. I’m wondering how this impacts other services with in-game currencies, like Grand Theft Auto and Roblox in which you can buy tokens to play different parts of the game.
I see the comparison there but, certainly in the UK, the laws governing DLC are the same as anything physical, in that it must work to a satisfactory degree, and work as sold (i.e. you don’t have to wait for promises of patches/fixes).
The way Microsoft operates its store, by UK standards, is a little unscrupulous. Just because it’s legally right doesn’t mean it’s morally right.
This may sound like a sweeping generalization, but it’s fundamentally true:
Free market capitalism is essentially amoral. Consumers can factor in a company’s perceived moral stance when deciding where to spend their money (witness the rise and fall of ‘Woke’ companies) but ultimately, it’s the companies that deliver the best product for the consumer’s needs, with the best customer service that survive long term.
I would guess one of the problems would be that most devs seem to use no copy protection. You’d simply download the trial/product, copy the files to another folder, refund it, then copy them back to the Community Folder. That Community folder and it’s lack of any kind of DRM is the problem. MS’s own dlc’s are usually encrypted which people complain about but other stuff doesn’t seem to be. The game will just see the files as another free addon.
Much easier to just not offer refunds. People upset about that should blame the people who pirate. Steam has a handy workaround as when you refund something it’s pulled from your account and even if the files are still there, it won’t work. I suspect MS can’t do that b/c of the nature of the program and the enormous quantity of free and legitimate dlc available and the inability of MSFS to tell the difference between legitimate and not.
Whenever I’ve had a refund for poor MSFS DLC, it’s always been removed from my content manager.
I think that’s a bit disingenuous to claim those of us dissatisfied with sub-par products should point the finger at pirates. That’s like home insurers refusing to pay out and telling the customer to take it up with the burglar…
Maybe. I’m listing reasons, not whether it’s right or wrong. I’m sure you’re aware of the affect piracy has had on the sharing of files online and the advent of copy protection software…
Of course it is removed from your content manager. But if you’ve already copied the files out, I doubt that’d matter. I’d be happy if someone wants to try it and prove me wrong. It’s just a theory. I did say the community folder was the problem, not removing it from the content manager.
Plus if you’re able to always get refunds anyway, I fail to see the point of this entire thread. I’ve also got a refund once or twice without issue, but it seemed from all the complaints not everyone has that kind of experience.
Does that even work? — taking an encrypted Marketplace add-on package out of the OneStore folder and sticking it in the Community folder and having it actually load?
I’d think it would not since the whole point is DRM.
I’m not 100% sure. But most 3rd party stuff isn’t encrypted - or so it looks at a glance. I could be wrong. I just scrolled down installed market addons and looked at them vs addons in Community Folder. Maybe the Market does add something.
As an example I looked at the Got Friends Optica in my official folder - something I bought from the Market and then look at the file structure of the Optica from Orbx which I did not buy from the Market (so it’s in the Community Folder) and the structure looks pretty similar.
Then look at something that has DRM applied such as MS/Asobo aircraft that are encrypted and the file structure is totally different.
Edit: If it’s encrypted, I’m pretty certain it would not work. I missed that when I first read your post. But I kinda suspect most of the Market isn’t… but willing to be proven wrong.
There are definitely encrypted files in a Marketplace add-on. The DRM is one of the reasons developers like FSReborn are available as Marketplace-only add-ons — the DRM is solid.
Look in the SimObjects folder and you will see files with garbled names.
I don’t see it on everything, but it does seem that if they can just apply it at will, they should be able to apply it to everything and that means it’s not a valid reason not to offer trials/refunds.
Obviously I don’t know what you’re looking at seeing as I can’t glance over your shoulder, but the base sim content won’t be encrypted, so not everything in the OneStore folder is encrypted, but all purchased content should definitely be.
I was looking in the official folder (Steam version) at addons that are not MS first party items. I noticed airports and liveries without anything that looked like encryption at first, but then I see they do have a file called fsarchive so that’s probably the same thing? Esp since third party items that are not from the Market seem not to have it.
