Deimos was found guilty of stealing coding from other developers in a court of law, but they havent stopped him selling on the Marketplace and i don’t see you campaigning for his removal either
If the OWNER of the Intellectual Property wants to inform Microsoft about the infringement…there are rules in the Marketplace agreement that should allow Microsoft to quickly take actions towards the offending Partner
(also everyone else can notify Microsoft about an IP infringement, but owner’s notification is more appropriate, especially in the form of a lawsuit)
but keep in mind that to determine an intellectual property infringement may not be so easy (especially if IP copyright/patent/trademark is not registered)
So the best option imho for users is to rate bad addons and ask refund if advertised features are not available in the purchased product.
Tbh…if I would be in charge of the Markeplace QA, I would quickly investigate about all this fuss and take immediate actions!
You can see my title includes “other poor developers”. If you have knowledge of this developer i urge you to add your comments about Deimos.
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At end of the day its user due diligence isn’t it
If a dev has low scores all over the shop then you take your chances.
I’m proud that only one of the products I worked on has under 4* rating and that one was people not understanding the product - meh.
But quality, imo, should not be a driver for something to be included. If you don’t like the quality or are in any doubt, don’t buy it!
They aren’t the only ones who steal code and profit from it …
Point is, they’re not hiding the terrible exterior modelling because images of the product clearly show it. I saw the 747 the other day and could tell just from the thumbnail how bad it is!
I can’t comment of the validity of the alleged intellectual property theft but that’s a different matter entirely.
In the UK, no. Otherwise, car boot sales wouldn’t be a thing. Neither would eBay.
Personally, I don’t think there’s much point continuing this thread when the simple ‘solution’ is to avoid buying planes that clearly look like kids’ toys.
Is not about who wants to buy what its about who owns mscenery and their invisibility and why they are allowedto flood our marketplace with rubbish. Its also about honest business practices.
The ingestion test is unlikely to be how well does this fly and/or look. It is most likely a test of “does it crash the sim” and does it comply with all of the requirements of the SDK. Simpler addons are likely quicker and easier to test with little to no feedback of changes needed to be made to the developer, hence the fast ingestion of these addons. More complex addons will likely take longer to go through and have more to and fro with the developer to tweak and so take much longer to process into marketplace. So copy and paste shovelware slides straight through and makes a quick buck for the developer and for Microsoft - win win for them and lose for the poor people who pay for it
I doubt we’re going to determine that here. It’s a matter for Microsoft. But since it’s not a legal requirement to be visible, aren’t we flogging a dead horse? Aside from the accusation of intellectual property theft (unsubstantiated at the moment), we’ve got nothing that would warrant their removal from the Marketplace. As I said, images of their products are clearly visible so the best thing we can do for now is avoid them. I can’t see any semi-serious simmer looking at their products and being convinced enough to buy. And casual players/gamers likely won’t even notice the amateurism.
“I don’t like their stuff” isn’t really a valid reason to remove a dev from a store. That they’re basically invisible is certainly suspicious but the law doesn’t make provision for acting on hunches alone. Most of us know to avoid MScenery but there is undoubtedly a market for their wares, whether we like it or not. You can’t buy a clearly deformed piece of pottery from a shop and decide later than you want a refund because it’s deformed. The shop would claim that you had ample opportunity to inspect the goods.
I feel we’re brewing a bit of a storm in a teacup here. It is what it is. Just don’t buy MScenery’s products — that way, whether they’re faceless or not is completely immaterial.
And therefor they maybe rate them high.
Anyway, I think it’s all about getting better filters in the MP.
Simply put, one simmer’s trash is another simmer’s treasure - and Microsoft has very clearly stated many times that they are not curators of Marketplace content by quality. If it follows the rules, it’s permitted - end of story.
The reason it is perceived as a flood is simple - basic low-detail addons take less time and effort to create, so MScenery can crank out 20 aircraft in the time it takes [insert high-quality dev of your choice here] to make one (1).
I wonder what percentage of people who have purchased the sim are also active members of this forum - or extensively research Marketplace offerings on any other internet platform.
I’d like to think it’s a big number. But the fact that sub-basement level developers are still actively selling their wares leads me to believe otherwise.
I suppose one could do some simple math, but that would require sales figures.
- One could infer that the number is at least half of the 12,000,000 reported for FS2020.
- There are around 157,000 forum members
That means about 2.6% (give or take) of the people who own the sim have an account here.
Is it any wonder so many don’t have the information they need in order to make informed purchasing decisions?
[quote=“Azlog, post:112, topic:728776, full:true”]
As a product tester i can honestly say no, the ms injestion process does not check these things, if it did there would be no need for bug reporting from the consumer.
The MS process checks for sim compliance, CTD, contractual compliance such as banned/restricted artwork, copyright infringements, and in a separate schedule for console WASM compliance to the support module structure (security/integrity tests)
They do not check operation, condition or anything else which is down to the 3rd party developers QA responsibility.
Absolutely 
bang on
Not at all. But bear in mind the spectrum of MSFS players ranges from 5-year-olds who’re fascinated by planes, to 95-year old former pilots (who are equally fascinated by planes). Some people (most likely in the former category) won’t do research and will be quite happy with a MScenery plane. But anyone who’s semi-serious really needs a reality check if they buy this, having seen the marketing images, then complain about a lack of realism or accuracy. A fool and his money are easily parted, as they say.
The info needed to make an informed decision is out there, in spades. If people don’t seek it — or don’t bother to look at simple Marketplace ratings — that’s on them.
Hi folks,
This thread has meandered quite a bit from the OP and has turned into speculation of what is legal or not and accusations of “scamming” being directed towards certain third party developers and/or Microsoft.
We would like to remind everyone of the following:
- Not every product (or developer) on the Marketplace will appeal to you personally. What you like or dislike will be different from other simmers. For example, you might only be interested in expert level aircraft that attempt to model their real-world counterparts to the highest degree of realism, but other players might find those add-ons intimidating and overly complicated and therefore prefer more simple/less realistic mods. The Marketplace therefore has products that appeal to everyone, and it is not restricted to sell add-ons that appeal to one type of simmer only.
- We encourage everyone to conduct their own consumer research and make informed decisions appropriate to your individual tastes before buying (or choosing not to buy) anything from the Marketplace.
- As we have posted many times previously, Product A existing on the MP does not delay or block the release of Product B. In almost all cases, the initial Microsoft intake process for new MP products is completed within a few business days of the developer submitting their product to the MP team. It is the responsibility of the third-party developer themselves to complete functional testing of their own product. The product is launched on the Marketplace on the first Monday or Thursday after the developer has indicated that testing is complete and signed off that their product is ready for sale. Naturally, more basic/simple add-on products are quicker to test and receive sign off from their respective developers faster than more complex add-ons.
- Further to the above, Developer A releasing a dozen or more lower fidelity products on the MP each week does not in any way delay the release of Developer B releasing a higher fidelity product. This perception exists from the early days following the launch of MSFS (2020) when the Marketplace Team within Microsoft was formerly responsible for functional testing of all products which resulted in the backlog growing ever larger, but that process was changed several years ago. Now that third party developers are responsible for testing and signing off on their own products, it is no longer the case that releasing one product to the MP means the team at Microsoft was unable to approve a different product from a different developer that week. It is not a zero sum game and developers of less complex products are not “clogging up the queue” as many have people have stated.
As always, if you have specific feedback to share about the Marketplace, please post your comments in this thread. We read all of your posts carefully and routinely share your feedback (both positive and negative) with the leaders on the MSFS project.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
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