Let me recap what could be expected in 2014.

Promised Alpha in march\april of 2014, never happened. Typhoon was on track of Q4 release of 2014 never happened. P-40 on track for release Q4 2014.....never happened.
Alpha release of Hawk was late December of 2014. Meanwhile......the only way to install it was via a link from VEAO in the forums as starforce integration was practically non existent.

The main issue I saw with the Hawk release was VEAO's goal of having the alpha being sold through their store before it was sold on the DCS store. This meant that VEAO were looking to gain 100% of the sales.
If the Hawk was originally set up via the DCS official store, none of the issues would have risen as they did when VEAO eventually released the Hawk and the ongoing activation and patch issues.
"Don't bite the hand that feeds you"
VEAO got greedy, Pete himself stated VEAO sold '10's of thousands of copies of the hawk' (Which I still find hard to believe, like most of the crap that flowed from his dodgy PR dealings)

Never trust a bloke who deals in debt recovery......

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Behind every good ponzi scheme is a company director that knows debt recovery law......

Thank you to Vaderini who saved me quite a bit of time posting the Jewell in the crown.

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and leaf_on_the_wind for the information he has put forward on VEAO's bankrupt filings in another thread.

To break this down into simple terms, Veao's rise and fall to this point is like setting the curvature on an axis on a Joystick.......keep moving the slider and eventually it flat lines.
VEAO were about to flatline.

Balloon Factor is a thing.

I will cut VEAO some slack in terms of bugs on their Alpha release hawk.....it was bashed around enough that it was of course "an alpha release".
To continue on with this story......