As I posted in the ED forums...it's scary the amount of control they would have. They could suspend or revoke your ability to play your purchased game with the flick of a switch. It gives me an un-easy feeling given their rigid stance towards customers at times in the past.

I guess we'll see...

::::In heavy Russian Accent:::::: Comrade Force, you have done us great disservice with your comments on our forum and other forums. Effective immediately You are locked out of your modules until you can improve your worship

I hope they read this thread on SimHQ (they probably do in the hunt to ban users who speak negatively about them)......It's almost laughable....Sith was ridiculing people and using the same condescending tone that we're all familiar with in the first 30 pages and couldn't see a problem with the 3 day authentication window yet he suddenly defends servicemen in one of the latter pages.

It's that level of short-sightedness that ED and their mods have that causes all this trouble in the first place.....they just cannot see the woods for the trees. It's taken 40 pages of a thread for them to finally realise what the customers concerns are......but at that point the customers are labelled insignificant and they state the poll is next to useless anyway!

It's no wonder they consistently fail. They should really add an 'F' into the 'DCS' abbreviation somewhere.

personally I find the idea of having to worry about activation reason enough to delete the whole thing, who wants to worry every time a game is run if the developer servers are online or not.

The mods are in full on damage limitation mode there and tying themselves in knots doing it!

Same thing with console games though, and, AFAIK Steam. So not entirely a new thing.

My highlight in this ED forum thread:

"It's protection for ED and even for us." https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3307248&postcount=219

So the new drm system is there to protect us, the user!

It's not as much of a concern from big name folks that understand customer relations...that especially includes customers that are critical of their product. ED's track record is a little hazy on this subject and have had more of a hardline banning approach in the past.

In the wrong hands...this type of control can be hazardous to the consumer.

Go ED for protecting the little man !!!


Not !!!

Sorry but as this point this is just sheer paranoia. Fine, I get the slippery slope but on the other hand, I don't believe that ED would do something illegal - at the very least, it isn't in their own interest. And I think you'll find a bunch of people who believe that Steam doesn't known customer relations either. Your viewpoint is provably biased.

You might not like the guy who sells you stuff in the corner store, but you'd have to be a particular kind of person to think that he's come after you and take away the stuff you bought from him just because he didn't like your face.

Ghost, you've mentioned that an action of sorts that ED has taken isn't in their own interest on at least two occasions now! The multiple development streams aren't in their interest either, it was a poor decision and has caused absolute carnage...most of which is probably to the detriment of ED and 3rd party resources and funding.
The 'argument', if you want to call it that that ED don't make poor decisions that aren't in their own interest holds no weight whatsoever, there are an absolute boatload of other examples that could be used as well but they've been done a million times over.

Let's be honest, the only valid statement I've ever seen from ED or the mods over on the ED boards regarding Starforce is that it is expensive which is probably quite true.....however, lets not pretend for one minute that the expense isn't passed onto the customer with every paid module either. If ED have concerns that Starforce isn't providing the necessary protection then they've waited a long time before doing anything about it.



The ED message boards take away your posting rights if they don't like your posts, but still allow the same person to continue to buy their modules........and that's different because?

\o I know! I know! It's good for them!

You know that companies will typically go after stuff that makes them money now. It's easy to say that this is short-sighted when you're sitting on a high-horse, but in the real world you might flat out need to do this. This results in doing things for the sake of delivering on time. And probably not having time to refactor either. Your point is easy to make from a philosophical, theoretical, or well funded point of view. I'm not going to argue against your credentials, I'm sure you're as big as you've implied and that you know what you're doing - see, I completely agree with the theory of what you're saying. I try to push the exact same stuff where I work.

Where I disagree with you is that you're connected to how software is developed in the majority of the world. If all of this stuff runs so smoothly for you, I'd say you're in luck; you had the people (above and below) and the funding to get things set up right. Congrats, I really envy you.



I don't see why their internal development wouldn't suffer the same delays that we see for the modules we want to buy. I don't think such a switch is trivial and it's not the only thing they're working on.



You don't buy access to the forums. You don't even have to own the product to be on the forums. You're really being disingenuous here.

ED hasn't been burdened with having to meet any release dates as far as us...the public is concerned. As far as I can remember...they haven't given us a hard release date in years. Maybe their private contracts get this luxury...and the fixes/modules we are waiting for probably get pushed out IMO.

I am envious of ED though...I work in a vaguely similar field with 3D models/animations for high end clients. We don't just get to take as long as we want on projects...we wouldn't have any clients if that were the case.

When you are the only show in town you can get away with acting like a dick

I am waiting to hear,

"Initially we announced 2.5 merge being released in the 'coming weeks' has now been delayed as all man power has been diverted to the new DRM controversy that, was not even about piracy in the first place, to satisfy our valued customers"

You're right, ED has no contract with you to deliver to you something on a given schedule. Lay out some significant cash on the table, commission them and things will be different. I don't know why you're trying to imply that something else is going on.

An interesting couple of points, but I'm not sure how the dimensions of my horse comes into this. The only pressure ED created to deliver multiple dev streams came about because of their own inability to deliver what was 2.0 (at the time) on time. When they split the development into two distinct paths at that point in time it was only because they were already 4 years late and needed to get something released to keep the wolves at bay and even then only managed to delivery partial functionality across each branch compared to what was their stated intent. It's funny that you mention the real world because funnily enough, I work there........

Does everything run perfectly? No.
Do we come across problems? Yes
Do we learn from our mistakes? Yes

See the similarities with ED....the first two examples of course, it's the third example in bold red font where ED and the company I work for are worlds apart.



You have big kahoonas to mention ED and 'delivering on time' in the same post. It's beyond comical, it's beyond laughable. If you don't have time or if you suddenly need to refactor then you haven't planned it properly in the first place or identified the potential risks. 'Refactoring' hasn't just happened once or twice with ED, they constantly move the goalposts........it's a clear example of bad planning, there really is no argument.



So you should understand it then.....it doesn't matter if the project or game is worth $500 or $500m, the company will not entertain something that isn't viable and won't turn a profit - but it's all still relative and it certainly isn't just philosophical or theory based. Having funds and identifying areas of risk is only a small part of it, mismanagement, wasting resources, feature creep and not following logical integration processes or deviating from the intended road-map (if they even have one, there is very little evidence) and milestones are some of the key areas that ED just can't get right, they deny they fail and consistently continue to get it wrong.....that's incompetence right there. Failure to rectify the problem is incompetence and no other developer comes close to continually failing like ED does. How come other developers can do it? How come other developers do learn from their mistakes? Why do ED refuse to budge from their stubborn ways?



You talk about it like these activities from the requirements and design stages through to successful delivery is akin to a stroke of luck. It's not, and believe me if ED and the mods want to boldly claim they have been cracking the whip for 27 years or whatever it is then they have absolutely no excuse to consistently fail like they do at every corner. ED have no excuse in not being able to set up a project, plan the development, integration, testing and delivery of the engine or a module correctly when it is their core business. It also looks like you're trying to put the blame into that tiny, teeny little part of the world in which ED operate from - now that's weak....and again, there is no excuse they have had 27 years to learn from their mistakes yet they haven't taken the opportunity to rectify a single one. Hows about then, that ED start developing software like the 'majority of the world' do, and move away from the bubble of utter incompetence and the failure model in which they currently operate in? And again, if ED haven't got the right people in place (above and below) after 27 years then lo and behold there's yet another example of utter incompetence.

So much potential, yet not one iota of it realised. Wake up and smell the coffee.

Upon deeper reflection, I have come to realize you are 100% correct. Why would ED want to save face over this? Since when have ED cared about the customer? Trigger-happy on the ban-hammer, rule 1.13, taking away the ability to sell/gift our old modules, etc.... clearly they didn't care about their "face", so why should they care now? I apologize for my confusion on the matter.



I'm sure you wouldn't mind ED releasing broken modules given that they're willing to fix those modules.... I'm also sure you wouldn't mind how long ED takes as long as they're working on it. Again, my bad. I totally see it from your perpective now and can appreciate why you would say such things.



Just like you move on when you no longer wish to defend points you were trying to make.... like admitting to saying things that you wish to backtrack on....



I'm not worried about false information... that does not come from me.

1.13 is unfair, correct. It was a way to ban anyone for anything, correct. 1.13 is gone now, correct.
Still does not erase the fact that it was there and it was used to it's fullest extent and sometimes even past that.



You wish to disqualify other people's experience and then come back here claiming your own has more merit? You've not seen people banned, sure. But have you looked? Tell you what.... try being critical of ED on ED's forums and we'll take a note of how long that lasts before you're banned. Up for the challenge?

Link please? Might be a fun read.



So far, I've not encountered a Steam game with a 3-day phone-home DRM, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. Which games are 3-day DRM on Steam?



As has been pointed out, how is 3 dev streams in their own interest? How is banning people left-right-and-center in their own interest? How is releasing their core program years and years late in their own interest? How is releasing their modules years late in their own interest?



So if you forecast a development time of 2 years and end up making that product for a total of 6 years, that makes the company more money? Please do explain!



What have they released on time? As for refactoring, who made them do that? Was it not ED themselves?



And despite bragging about being in the business for 27 years, ED can't still do things right??



True.... they wish to silence your voice, but if you still want to throw money at them, who are they to silence your wallet? That would be rude!



You are correct, ED has no contract with us to finish anything within a given time. Apparently, ED has no contract with itself to finish anything within a given time

As for the cash, it is an assumption that military contracts pay up-front. For us customers, the cash is here waiting for ED to earn it. As I've been saying for a good while now, make a good product and ED may well start it's own mint --- but where is the F-14 Tomcat or the F-16 Falcon or the F-18 Hornet or the AH-64 Apache? Heck even with the Hornet, they don't seem to be in much rush to finish it and get it out the door ---- in fact, they've just admitted that they'll be significantly neutering the initial Hornet release!