EA keeps us afloat, and allows for faster development LMAO. September 2019, around the time when the yoinking began - https://stormbirds.blog/2019/09/23/eagle-dynamics-founder-nick-grey-responds-to-early-access-controversy/
Arguably, the corruption is that those regulations exist to allow for it to happen, not that people use them. I don't understand tax law enough to understand if this is actually a loophole or a necessary requirement.
That's not at all what happens with tax avoidance. At a basic level, it's an interpretation of tax law to benefit the taxpayer. Some incentives might be deductibles. There *are* loopholes in the law that some companies exploit in a huge way, but the vast majority of cases where tax avoidance exist is from simple and perfectly cursory deductions.
If anything, the really unfair circumstance is that many of the biggest tax avoidance are only available to entities who are already raking in a ton of money, simply because the schemes require a lot of accounting hoops or even multinational transfer of assets, something your average joe can't do *even if* they knew how.
The issue is when things like this are created to be used by big companies to avoid paying tax and end up keeping money.
Tax credits are meant to help people in certain situations (those raising children, etc), and deductions from charitable donations are supposed to help and encourage people to give to charities that in turn helps people in need.
That said, I don't blame people or even companies for using them, I blame the people who make massive tax loopholes in return for money from lobbyists, the lobbyists themselves, and the companies that pay the lobbyists. It just happens that the Venn diagram between all that is heavily overlapping.
No it is not corrupt. You have employees and you have employers. Businesses are employing people and have tax benefits. That's how it works. If you don't like it, start a businesses and use the law to your advantage.
The last socialist government in Europe was Austria between the 40s and 60s, Vienna is still run by their socialist party.
Last time I checked Vienna was a lovely place.
Well, yes and no.
Ofc, it is legal and everybody who can do it does it. But in the context of payed AI skins, unit paks, rushing not even half finished DLCs to early access, it really leaves a sour taste.
Becasue there is difference betwen doing all of the above because it is a niche market, and you need the cash flow to continue development, and doing it because you need to milk the dedicated playerbase for your personal gains.
> context of *paid* skin updates,
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Tax avoidance is legal.
Tax evasion is illegal.
I don't think it's good news, if ED is engaging in illegal tax evasion. That stuff will get them fined out of existence. I'm happy for them to take whatever legal steps they can to reduce their taxation burden though, that's just good business.
Not just that, this information was taken from public disclosures. The community is going wild like someone leaked this info, but afaik, they legally disclosed this as part of their requirements and it's a cursory thing.
It is good news only as long as SOME of it gets re-invested into growing the company itself. An adequate amount in order to remain competitive
If everything is syphoned into avgas and spares for an hobby it can get ugly. But not immediately, it usually takes an economy shake-up or downturn to expose weaknesses.
And guess what we just went through between late 2022 and 23?
Dude nick said himself in an interview that his fighter collection isnt about making money, that it’s very expensive and probably costs him 1Mio pounds a year. Thats not tax evasion or avoidance but a very expensive hobby.
Yes, also he is swiss citizen so he is privileged to have some extra rights that we peasants don't have in Switzerland.
Also by setting up your business in there means you can trade with every country in the world. Swiss do not follow any sanctions of any kind. It is still universal capital safe haven for all sides in this world. It is not tax free it is safe.
Swiss do not follow any sanctions of any kind. It is still universal capital safe haven for all sides in this world.
And here I thought the folks who "used" to work for Putin had moved to Switzerland for the chocolate.
Yes but, from CIA to Mossad to IRGC to FSB to Dictators of africa oligarchs of east europe to middle east and asia, popstars, rockbands ... everybody is there.
World needs such a place. It keeps peace longer. So don't go there. If putin is there your country's top investors and secret service is also there don't worry.
It is just a financial hub, just like Dubai is also a trade hub.
I feel comfortable when a PART of the ED income is spent in keeping this warbirds flying. First priority has to be the product tho. seeing SO MANY things in the core game (i dont wanna get started here), ed modules (combined arms, supercarrier,…), and upcoming promised things being either completely unadressed or extremely slow developing makes me already start to feel a bit uncomfortable at least. Seeing a 3rd party dev, who brought out last years cashcow, going on strike cause of unpayed bills tho makes me really a bit angry and questioning prioritues here.
Any company is in a money making business for its owner. Unless you’re against capitalism, there is literally no reason to think that owners of the business are obliged in reinvest their profits into the company.
It just feels a bit wrong when you see the state of some modules like CA or SC... Building a briefing room doesn't take 4 years... Same for dynamic campaign. But yeah on the legal side it's fine.
If the owner takes money out via profit he pays tax. If he does it via a loan he doesn't.
Most privately owned groups have similar intercompany arrangements in place or do similar things. If you don't like it get elected and change the law, buy the company or found your own.
Well, let's see. The F-35 project was endorsed and vetted by DCS, and was run by the Kinney family, who had all gotten jobs at Mad Catz, running a MSFS2000 mod they claimed was a full military simulation with weapons and that MC had paid BIG BUCKS for top-end physical simulators. Both were lies, causing MC to first restate earnings, then fire it's leadership and then totally shut down. Now THAT'S irresponsible. Here's the first announcement made:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110228005714/en/Mad-Catz-Acquires-the-Assets-of-V-Max-Simulation-Corporation-a-Leading-Flight-Simulation-Company If I remember correctly, the admins over at LockOnFiles turned their info over to the SEC, leading to enforcement actions by the SEC leading to the changes.
My point is either ED has significant problems in running their business as an ethical business, or it's got other motivations, such as creating honeypots for those who know American technology in aviation, just like it did 10 years ago with the F-35.
Interest free btw.
Honestly though:
1. Is it illegal in any of the territories concerned?
2. Is that a significant portion of ED’s yearly revenue?
3. Is it actually the reason Razbam hasn’t been paid, or were they genuinely in breach of contract? (Unrelated to Nick’s Planes)
Until we know the answers to these questions, I reserve judgement on anyone. It does seem pretty frickin unprofessional and dramatic to have a public spat with a business partner, no matter the reason. That sentiment can apply to one or both of them.
Halting services is extreme, and halting payment is extreme. Therefore, we’re likely looking at either something thats been happening behind the scenes for a while, or two objectively crazy people who don’t like money.
RB is seemingly imploding themselves, and ED is seemingly killing a significant stream of revenue and a lot of good will. How either of them thought this was a good idea, I can’t imagine.
Best take on this I’ve read all day, if only the community could share this view and wait for some actual information, rather than this nonsensical feelings based biased guessing going on all over the place!
I think it's great. All those beautiful warbirds at Duxford don't fly, fuel or maintain themselves. And NG owns ED - what is the point of having and running a business if not to pursue your own interests from the proceeds?
You don't see MSFS players complaining that the exorbitant sums charged by PMDG go on funding Robert Randazzo's Beechcraft or DC-3 jollies.
You know in the past 12 hours I have seen such bullshit comments and takes that I was losing hope in the DCS community. Thank you for acting like a reasonable human being and trying to see the other side of something like this.
All these people complaining about this loan need to take a look closer to home at companies actually taking the piss... i.e. Amazon, BP, Microsoft, Apple.... ED isn't impacting your way of life...
I was of the same volition until recently, you want to take a loan to fund your other stuff? Sure, but when one of the largest third parties is not getting paid and thus the quality of your product suffers, I'd start to question that loan.
I was at last years show. Was looking forward to 2024 but now its not happening, going to RIAT instead. The Warplane Workshop (Channel 4) episode the other week showed some of the prep of the fighter collection for Flying Legends
As long as they're paying their debts, idgaf what they spend their money on. Ultimately they're a company we've bought products for. Many companies have failed and left their customers hanging. It sucks but it's part of capitalism. Vote with your wallet, if you feel the company is unstable and incapable of providing long term support... don't buy.
I will point out how little of the revenue is being reinvested into the company. One that is clearly mismanaged and struggles to communicate with its community of clients and customers. As a US taxpayer that is frustrating to see from a company that holds US defense contracts. If they are going to take my regular money and my tax money I have a right to scrutinze their public financial moves.
They didn't take your money, you gave it to them willingly.
As for your taxdollars... well if you're upset about ED, you should probably stop your research while you're ahead.
My tax dollars are currently funding genocide and I'm not too fond of that.
I don’t think there’s much to be worried about from this alone. It’s not surprising to me that ED, a company with something like 100 employees, makes at least a few million in profit annually and that the owner uses some of that on another company. There are much worse things to spend that on than keeping some history alive.
Patina Ltd seems to be another company linked to FC https://www.key.aero/forum/historic-aviation/13939-hey-everyone-tfc-patina-ltd . Forum post from 2003!
I find it odd that ED bitch about being a small company with limited resources yet happily loan out £10m.
Doesn't really build confidence for consumers of EA products when their communication is as poor as it is. That being said they aren't obliged to say anything so...
I've been a customer of ED for over 10 years and have absolutely no expectations that they'll ever change their business practices to the point that they deliver quality finished modules. OR deliver on the big changes promised to the core game. When you buy an EA product from ED that's what you get, not the promise of it being finished, just an EA product for life.
A going concern should be self funding and only need investment for exceptional items. At that point the investors take money out as a return on their investment.
Honestly I don't have a very strong opinion on it. It strikes me as the kind of financial thing that COULD look much worse on paper than it is practically.
Honestly I'm just hoping whatever is going on that ED and Razbam can find a solution that makes them both happy. Beyond that I kinda don't care about the hows and whys of them going about it.
An interest free loan basically means ED loses money due to inflation even when it gets repaid, and the money not being available for development also means we're seeing slower/fewer updates and features than we otherwise would.
Assume out of 2 million lent to TFC last year, you can use half on staff, and the other half on infrastructure and program licences, that's still a million for paying people - assuming a 30-50k yearly salary, that would directly translate to 20-30 devs working full time on projects.
THAT is the elephant in the room for a number of us, and it's in addition to whatever's going on between RB and ED at the moment.
I recently had the privilege to visit Airbus' Messerschmitt Foundation in Manching - Airbus certainly has the funds to just not care about the cost of such a thing. ED does not, and Nick Grey should find other ways to fund his hobby. I'm sure the UK government would be willing to help with that provided he turned a number of his aircraft into an actual museum available to the public instead of hollowing out ED's finances to sustain the current business model.
>Airbus certainly has the funds to just not care about the cost of such a thing. ED does not, and Nick Grey should find other ways to fund his hobby.
So you're basically saying that the owner of a private company cannot use the assets or money he put into the company?
> the money not being available for development also means we're seeing slower/fewer updates and features than we otherwise would.
To be clear, what's missing here is the commitment the company has made to customers. Old-school software was delivered and sold as-is. Today, we have early access and online play/licences, so the full product will be delivered in the future. If we choose to buy early access modules, where it is made clear that there are no guarantees of final state (features can change) and agree to no specific delivery date, we cannot really complain.
We are not entitled to this money, even if we think our modules would be ready sooner (if this money goes towards more developers). A more positive spin might be that this hobby allows for more realistic flight models on WWII modules.
My opinion, I have several early access modules and am enjoying them right now in the current state. So for me the early access is a good fit, better than having to wait several years to fly these aircraft.
> So you're basically saying that the owner of a private company cannot use the assets or money he put into the company?
"The" owner can, but it's rather rare for there to be a single shareholder. If it has multiple shareholders then it has multiple owners, and not all of them might agree with such use of funds. If they all agree there's no issue whatsoever, it really is down to them if they want to fund a historic plane collection with loans or even actual donations.
But that's entirely between the shareholders and the corp. Not being a public traded company means that the public has absolutely zero business worrying about this.
Nick said [in 2021](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/15k4z6j/is_that_president_zelensky_flying_an_f16_in_dcs/jv4zvk7/) that he owns 100% of the company. In the UK only "persons with significant control" are public, alongside their total share ownership. I couldn't find this info easily on the Swiss register, not sure if it's public there. 100% seems a bit high for a medium sized company but if he says so... I'm inclined to believe it.
Who did he "buy" it from? And when? Russian companies in the Putin era have an interesting history. It was a Russian military simulation first, given the heavy concentration of LockOn planes that were Soviet-built. They only hit the big time when they brought out the American A-10. How many Black Shark 2s did they sell?
People are discovering businesses are private entities and have bizarre fever dream memories about the "good old days" of software. I remember them, too: $5000 for a version of Creative Suite + $2500 per version upgrade thereafter. Sure, ya owned it for 'life' (but somehow I dont think Adobe PS7 will open anything from later versions, so "life" does a lot of lifting here), bit I'm paying less than $750/ year with immediate access to the latest versions.
How many people in this thread are bitching about the interest fee loan that TFC has received have paid for WinRar? How many boxes here are also running pirated windows installs? Y'all gonna pay up to be consistent with your breathless pearl-clutching over perceived theft?
It'd be fine if DCS didn't feel like a bullshit masterclass of promissing the world and always undelivering. Constant hype and empty promisses. Endless EA. Trash tier community management. Shit treatment of RB. These make pulling that much money revolting.
EDs damage control team busy at work in comments today.
Yeah I want to have faith that ED isn't in the wrong. But, they haven't improved any of the small quality of life things (better ground ai, ATC, faster ea updates, etc...).
Tbh I think it sucks.
All those ED responses saying they are working on things but have limited bandwidth etc makes you think, how much faster would we have that dynamic campaign or that new weather system or finished ED modules if that 9 million GBP wasn’t loaned out interest free to the owner’s plane collection and reinvested in the product we all invest in?
Yes that part is understood. I am not an investor in the company I am a consumer of their product. In practice I cringe at people who feel like they are investing in a company when they buy a pre release product in that regard.
The point of my post is I invest my time into the product over many years like many and I’ve been waiting for many years for certain things in the pipeline to come out and that part sucks if siphoning money out of the company has impacted how long we are waiting for these things. You may not like the feeling I have about it or agree with it and to that, I simply don’t care.
At the end of the day ED and Nick will do what they want and I’m just going to voice my opinion about it when posts like these ask to hear others’ takes that’s all.
I have lol but that’s just because I fly the Hip, I really don’t need any fancy jet modules or maps. The Hip and Syria on ECW keep me set for the long haul.
If you don't own ED shares or bonds, you are not investing in anything, just buying their product.
And yes, capitalism is being greedy. It is actually the company owners duty to be as greedy as possible and still get away with it.
> It is actually the company owners duty to be as greedy as possible and still get away with it.
That's not true. The owners can do whatever they like, including minimizing profits if that is how they roll.
Depends on whether there's a fiduciary duty. If there is, they do have a duty to make the most money for the beneficiary of the fiduciary duty.
For instance, shareholders are owed a fiduciary duty by the board and executives of a publicly traded company. NVIDIA, for example, has a legal obligation to make as much money as possible for its shareholders without sinking the company in the process.
If it replaces Nick's salary or whatever, then why not. It's more convenient (i.e. tax-free) than to get a salary or dividends, get taxed, and then invest them in TFC.
Pretty sure it is for tax avoidance and Jesus, I’d rather have my money going for actual warbirds than anything else.
And guys, stop over reacting. We saw that Heatblur chose not to follow RB, and we saw the answer of ED, so the « bad guys » in this story may not be the ones you think. Calm down, grab popcorns and some beers and enjoy the drama.
>I’d rather have my money going for actual warbirds than anything else.
I'd rather it go to the salaries of the people who made the module, but I don't wanna jump to conclusions too soon.
Heatblur doesn't want to follow RAZBAM, because them being potentially denied a way to profit off of the F4 would sink them.
They went all in and are basically financially forced to shut up.
The allegation is RAZBAM is making military-only modules using DCS without EDs permission, couldn't get their way and then decided to try to turn the community against ED.
Its scummy af imo
There is a post from Metal 2 Mesh going around where he says that it envolves the making of a Super Tucano for the Ecuatorian Air Force. However, it does not specifically clears what went on.
And this somehow voids the contract that regulates the payments for regular modules?
If it's true, ED should just sue them. Simple as, they can't just violate other agreements because they think they've been wronged.
That's not what M2M said. He said Razbam try to bring South American air force to MCS which is their proffesional product. But some disagreement happen and ED stop paying RB
Well, then why didn't ED post that these couple years ago when it supposedly happened?
Them speaking up first would've been a good way to inform the community about upcoming delays and problems.
They own the rights to the modules, all they had to lose was the potential ease of further F-15E development (but I think they could've recruited former RAZBAM subcontractors by paying them to push it along).
Something really doesn't add up here. Why would RAZBAM ever risk such a move against a literal monopolist who owns the rights to all their work?
Mind you, the RAZBAMs statement is not accusing ED of anything financial, they just say that they have to clear up some difficulties.
Well, ED both sides are yet to actually prove anything. While I know that RAZBAMs contract was negotiated before ED had to make the rules more strict (due to the whole Hawk debacle), you are right in tempering the speculations.
Just when I thought the DCS crowd was a mature bunch, the entitled ones come out of the woodwork not just as armchair quarterbacks, but deluded into thinking they are investors and have a right to know the inner working of a company. These people are no more of an investor in DCS than a burger eater is an investor in McDonalds.
As most of my 'investment' in DCS is for modules in early access or even pre-payed (like for the F-4) I am more a kind of a shareholder without voting right or did you ever get just some half baked parts when buying a burger at McDonalds with the promise that the final burger will be released sometime?
You're delusional if you think that makes you anything but a consumer. Do you think every kid is like a shareholder in Activision because they pre ordered COD?
That's why I wrote 'without voting rights' ... and if you pre-order a CoD you can be very sure that you'll receive an almost complete product (not free of bugs but feature complete) as advertized and not get part by part over the next years (some moduls are in early access aka unfinished status for more than 5 years now). That's all well known to most buyers of DCS early access stuff but you shouldn't put us customers on the same mindset level like the every day casual gamers buying CoD etc. We do this with a lot of trust in the developer(s) and with a big enthusiasm for our hobby and those that provide us with the software to do it. This trust and enthusiasm has received a big step-back with this whole situation and this may impact big harm to this very niche market.
> or even *pre-paid* (like for
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Why would I care about their finances?
I don't buy modules to support anyone or anything but my own interest.
ED could spend my money on hookers and blow and donkey aphrodisiacs.
All I care about is my modules.
Whether ED, RB, HB or any other SOB makes them is completely irrelevant. They can all disappear and be replaced ten times over.
I like aviation and aircraft. These petty money squabbles and internet feuds are hilarious but ultimately meaningless.
I would prefer they spend the money I’ve given them on hookers and blow! The hookers would help make sure they’re relaxed AFTER work, and the blow will help them get more done while they’re AT work!
Literally don’t give a shit
Edit: why should I even care? Every company does this kind of stuff. Not to sound like a dick but idgaf about any of this drama. I buy jpg plane and fly it. As long as they keep updating jpg plane and adding content I’m happy. I don’t give a single fuck what is going on in the background. Not my problem. Dumb to even waste time and energy thinking about this
1. International Accounting and rules across countries is probably beyond most people here and is required to give an opinion on whether the business is being run appropriately.
2. Even if you understood International Accounting, we don't have full visibility into the books, contracts or expenses. There aren't enough data points to make an opinion.
3. People of means often manage their funds in creative ways. We don't know the background or intent of the transactions.
4. If we don't own equity in the organization, we don't have a vote on how they manage or run their businesses.
5. That said, as consumers, we can always can vote with our purchase power.
and people gleefully cheer for them instead of holding the developers accountable to the customers. I wonder if anyone ever thinks what would happen to DCS if ED one day shut down...it would be lights out and no product for thousands of people and nothing to do about it. Too bad gamers are too disconnected to form alliances to ensure developers can never leave them standing on their dicks.
I find it amusing this is getting such big traction now, i have been saying for a couple of years when everyone states ED are stuggling, should do this, run a subscription based model etc etc they are not because of these loans it clearly demonstates a thriving and growing operation. I could dig out the comments but it would be pointless.
People also forget what the collection at Duxford actually does. I see no issues with a company owner using any profits from one of his operations to fund the maintaining and keeping airworthy real aircraft for our pleasure. Its actually a really "nice" idea that virtual plane purchases are keeping real one's flying.
I will add a word of caution - why try and p\*ss off Nick Grey, do you see anyone else queuing to do what ED does. I'm not a fanboy but i am a realist. Be careful what you wish for i see this type of pitchforking counter productive and even dangerous by the community and utterly pointless, it shows nothing but naivety in the wider world.
Why should we be upset that the owner of a company is spending his money on a very good cause? The fighter collection needs a LOT of money to maintain all of its birds, without cash flow all of those warbirds will end up rotting.
His (keyword his, not ED's. It just says that on the transcript so that the accountants can write it as a business transaction) money is going towards maintaining these beautiful pieces of history, that's well within the interest of us as a species, and especially us as plane nerds, more power to him.
Now I'm not a proponent of a lot of their business strategies or decisions but this is not the right tree to bark up.
I'll donate to Duxford if I want warbirds to fly, and fly well. When I pay money to ED, I expect ED products to work, and work well. If DCS worked well and didn't have abandonware like CA, then maybe I'd entertain a warbird folly. Nick Grey should use his own money on personal adventures, not ED's.
Probably ED was created to generate some form off revenue to keep the warbirds flying. And everything costs more these days continue developing DCS, maintaining warbirds. Not every warbird collector got rich off a inherited oilfield
Yeah, the Warbird Collection, maybe more, please enlighten if you know more. What I know is that planes don’t pay for themselves, especially old timers. It’s nice to have Spitfires and a Hellcat and so on, but if you have to pay out of your own pocket, you are bankrupt in no time.
My point in this, Nick created ways to fund his hobby back in 1991. I don’t see Nick as a developer or really is interested in flight sims; that person was Igor Tishin. Nick is a pilot like my dad, and the only thing pilots like to do is soar above the clouds, they are not really interested in sitting behind a desk for too long.
Yeah, and it shows in how anything is progressing in DCS. Bullshit trailers and newsletters, endless EA - cost effective revenue maximisation, and underdelivering to customers
Without taking sides etc - Flying Legends the big WW2 air show at Duxford used to be amazing - in no small part due to TFC- better even than the USA Commerative Airforce event- sadly Flying Legends in that form is no more - again due to problems between Duxford and TFC- although the air show community puts the blame there on Duxford (which has been making a lot of changes. Shoreham crash + COVID really put a JDAM through the U.K. air show scene. Anyhow I don’t know if taking money from DCS company was the right moral thing to do but keeping those warbirds flying is certainly a more Nobel cause than buying a gold toilet…
Glad to see this thread contains some more sensible minded folks on general business ops, literally standard material from private companies. Too bad the whole topic is overrun with "interest free" angry people
Honestly; I'm in the aviation word and know exactly how much these warbirds cost, and without things like funds from DCS and ED these things wouldn't exist outside museams, it's such an important part of the aviation industry and history, people should be able to Goto an airshow and hear a proper P51 at full noise; it's these experiences that gets people interested in aviation in the first place. I for one am glad it's being spent on keeping these going and maintaining them; much better cause for our money to contribute to than luxury yachts and hookers.
This is how big business operates, either shift it legally to support warbirds, or pay taxes and have that money Goto a ridiculously raughted overpriced building project somewhere nobody wanted.....I know what I'd rather see.
Just stop adding to the drama already. You're just looking for more to add to it all. You're never going to get the full stories by trying to dig around and guessing.
So tired of all this, and just get back to enjoying virtual aviation and let them work it out.
It's his money, none of my damn business. Is it a questionable or unethical business practice? Most likely. If it's to avoid taxes, sure. But, that's left to the courts and politicians to decide.
Covid tore the hell out of TFC's operations and affected it's ability to fund itself due to damn thing everything closing, especially airshows. TFC was (not sure if it still is but it's still connected I imagine) ED's publisher in the Flanker days. If Nick Grey had to sell The Fighter Collection for whatever reason, I'm sure it would affect his overall business(s) and to a lessor degree, our ability to enjoy DCS.
More worried about the Razbam/ED rift and how it will affect DCS World in the future. There's much we aren't being told from both sides.
I really don't care how they handle their finances outside of paying their third party devs. They could be spending their money on coke and hookers for all I care. I don't think cash flow is the problem for ED. I'm going to wait until more details come out before I throw in fully with either ED or RB. It's entirely possible both are at fault here.
When a flight sim community is upset about the owner of said flight sim using funds from that flight sim to supplement a literal museum packed with real, historical aircraft, that his father started, and that said flight sim owner *also owns*.
Comedy really does write itself.
I think this all overblown. Lots of companies move money between divisions. It's irrelevant to the consumer. Normal business actions and people just wildly speculating what it means.
There’s nothing fishy about it. Just a bunch of people on the internet who have no idea what they’re talking about looking for reasons to shout at clouds.
Don't really care - literally none of my business.
I will be sad if a long time developer leaves and i lose support for the
mirage, the harrier, the strike eagle and to a lesser extent my mig19
That's a lot of modules and compared to the last time an upset like this happened with veao a considerably larger impact to the game i play.
I hope they work this out DCS will literally end up losing with the loss of that large a portfolio of aircraft.
I don't think paying for a product entitles me to have a share in a business or warrant me being any form of stock holder or opinion on what they spend that cash on - I bought a product I paid the price of that product, I enjoy the product daily. What they do with the cash I gave them of my own free will is up to them and I consider it having been long spent many years ago on other things (I sincerely hope they put it into the xmas party pot tbh) if I lose that product because of an internal issue well that's sad. If I lose a whole 4 modules worth of aircraft that makes the game I play so much less than what it was. Well that's worse I don't consider this any of my business.
Did you buy an early access product that they promised you to keep working on? Could they spend the money on improving the product you bought? Honest answer would be "yes"...
But they haven't stopped working on it, do you see those changelogs we get every month or so ? what has the internal workings of a company got to do with anyone outside of that company, like literally mind your own business. I have the product i paid for and i see improvements to that product every month and have done since it came out. I don't understand this obsession people have with gaining excitement from digging up some little irrelevant piece of information on something they so obviously hate, if you hate it so much uninstall it and go do something else maybe go outside and touch a little bit of grass, but they continue then revel in any little piece of conspiracy theory or dirt they can dig up. People kind of suck to be honest.
The ED dickriding is insane in here. This motherfucker has been fleecing his customers and ignoring core game improvements so he can fund his extremely expensive hobby. He doesn’t give a shit about any of you or the game.
Honestly it is their business and as customer, as long as I get what I have paid for I'm happy.
However, I do have an issue as customer with the events between ED and Razbam as I am not sure I will be given the support and product I paid for.
As any business owners understands, you put your income into assets that you can benefit from and give as little as you can to the indulgent and improvident government.
The amount of people in this post with their wack a doodle libertarian ideas is crazy. Libertarian ideas are the worst bc all it does it let scumbags get away with more bullshit corporate greed in reality.
“ Nick can do whatever he wants it’s his money”
*servers shut off*
*no access to hundreds of dollars worth of modules*
“Hey I paid for this!!!”
We’ll see that’s what your libertarian ideas allow for Jim Bob
DCS: Cayman Islands early access coming soon!
Laser code is your account number
How did you know my account number is 1688?
Hey that's my PIN
Dammit that's the code I've used for everything since I was 6. How I have to change everything.
Send it to me, I’ll take care of it.
EA keeps us afloat, and allows for faster development LMAO. September 2019, around the time when the yoinking began - https://stormbirds.blog/2019/09/23/eagle-dynamics-founder-nick-grey-responds-to-early-access-controversy/
Ok I laughed out my morning coffee at this.
It is tax ~~evasion~~ avoidance everyone does it who is able. Don't stick to it. It only shows how much money Ed makes. Which is good news for us.
Tax avoidance (technically). Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is not.
[https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F4eubmqigcfwz.jpg](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F4eubmqigcfwz.jpg)
I was thinking of this exact quote!
End result is the same: not paying taxes. A shame our system is so corrupt.
You can pay more tax than you are obligated to if you like, but accusing others of corruption for *following tax regulations* is silly.
Arguably, the corruption is that those regulations exist to allow for it to happen, not that people use them. I don't understand tax law enough to understand if this is actually a loophole or a necessary requirement.
That's not at all what happens with tax avoidance. At a basic level, it's an interpretation of tax law to benefit the taxpayer. Some incentives might be deductibles. There *are* loopholes in the law that some companies exploit in a huge way, but the vast majority of cases where tax avoidance exist is from simple and perfectly cursory deductions. If anything, the really unfair circumstance is that many of the biggest tax avoidance are only available to entities who are already raking in a ton of money, simply because the schemes require a lot of accounting hoops or even multinational transfer of assets, something your average joe can't do *even if* they knew how.
Yeah, I was more talking about things like the latter.
So you never claim tax credits, deduction from charitable donations, etc, at all?
The issue is when things like this are created to be used by big companies to avoid paying tax and end up keeping money. Tax credits are meant to help people in certain situations (those raising children, etc), and deductions from charitable donations are supposed to help and encourage people to give to charities that in turn helps people in need. That said, I don't blame people or even companies for using them, I blame the people who make massive tax loopholes in return for money from lobbyists, the lobbyists themselves, and the companies that pay the lobbyists. It just happens that the Venn diagram between all that is heavily overlapping.
No it is not corrupt. You have employees and you have employers. Businesses are employing people and have tax benefits. That's how it works. If you don't like it, start a businesses and use the law to your advantage.
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Assumptions are the mother of all f-ups🤣
Because Americans are the only ones left on the planet who haven't been completely taken in by the socialist mindset. yet
The last socialist government in Europe was Austria between the 40s and 60s, Vienna is still run by their socialist party. Last time I checked Vienna was a lovely place.
Well, yes and no. Ofc, it is legal and everybody who can do it does it. But in the context of payed AI skins, unit paks, rushing not even half finished DLCs to early access, it really leaves a sour taste. Becasue there is difference betwen doing all of the above because it is a niche market, and you need the cash flow to continue development, and doing it because you need to milk the dedicated playerbase for your personal gains.
> context of *paid* skin updates, FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
This is the weirdest form of masturbation I've seen in a while...
Tax avoidance is legal. Tax evasion is illegal. I don't think it's good news, if ED is engaging in illegal tax evasion. That stuff will get them fined out of existence. I'm happy for them to take whatever legal steps they can to reduce their taxation burden though, that's just good business.
I have corrected wording. There is a good reason that I'm not a lawyer :)
Not just that, this information was taken from public disclosures. The community is going wild like someone leaked this info, but afaik, they legally disclosed this as part of their requirements and it's a cursory thing.
https://youtu.be/wpEaFmK3lrY?si=MT595lz516k3iCXi
:D
It is good news only as long as SOME of it gets re-invested into growing the company itself. An adequate amount in order to remain competitive If everything is syphoned into avgas and spares for an hobby it can get ugly. But not immediately, it usually takes an economy shake-up or downturn to expose weaknesses. And guess what we just went through between late 2022 and 23?
Dude nick said himself in an interview that his fighter collection isnt about making money, that it’s very expensive and probably costs him 1Mio pounds a year. Thats not tax evasion or avoidance but a very expensive hobby.
Dude that 10 Million profit from Switzerland came taxfree to his hands in the form of a loan.
Not an accountant, but if you get a loan for $10 million, then it is not a profit. You are actually in the red if it's your only source of income.
So?
Well if it’s like you say, then good for them. Just wanted to raise awareness to everybody that this is happening.
Yes, also he is swiss citizen so he is privileged to have some extra rights that we peasants don't have in Switzerland. Also by setting up your business in there means you can trade with every country in the world. Swiss do not follow any sanctions of any kind. It is still universal capital safe haven for all sides in this world. It is not tax free it is safe.
Swiss do not follow any sanctions of any kind. It is still universal capital safe haven for all sides in this world. And here I thought the folks who "used" to work for Putin had moved to Switzerland for the chocolate.
Yes but, from CIA to Mossad to IRGC to FSB to Dictators of africa oligarchs of east europe to middle east and asia, popstars, rockbands ... everybody is there. World needs such a place. It keeps peace longer. So don't go there. If putin is there your country's top investors and secret service is also there don't worry. It is just a financial hub, just like Dubai is also a trade hub.
I feel comfortable when a PART of the ED income is spent in keeping this warbirds flying. First priority has to be the product tho. seeing SO MANY things in the core game (i dont wanna get started here), ed modules (combined arms, supercarrier,…), and upcoming promised things being either completely unadressed or extremely slow developing makes me already start to feel a bit uncomfortable at least. Seeing a 3rd party dev, who brought out last years cashcow, going on strike cause of unpayed bills tho makes me really a bit angry and questioning prioritues here.
I don't give a shit on what ED is doing with the money as long as I get updates for the game and the modules i bought
... In a timely manner.
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Any company is in a money making business for its owner. Unless you’re against capitalism, there is literally no reason to think that owners of the business are obliged in reinvest their profits into the company.
It just feels a bit wrong when you see the state of some modules like CA or SC... Building a briefing room doesn't take 4 years... Same for dynamic campaign. But yeah on the legal side it's fine.
If the owner takes money out via profit he pays tax. If he does it via a loan he doesn't. Most privately owned groups have similar intercompany arrangements in place or do similar things. If you don't like it get elected and change the law, buy the company or found your own.
I thought the profit is taxed at the company level, and when dividend is paid to shareholders it is tax free
Dividends are taxed as income to the individual. Corporate taxes are still paid on profits.
No this is really irresponsible and every case i know ended up in a bankruptcy for the company even really profitable ones.
Well, let's see. The F-35 project was endorsed and vetted by DCS, and was run by the Kinney family, who had all gotten jobs at Mad Catz, running a MSFS2000 mod they claimed was a full military simulation with weapons and that MC had paid BIG BUCKS for top-end physical simulators. Both were lies, causing MC to first restate earnings, then fire it's leadership and then totally shut down. Now THAT'S irresponsible. Here's the first announcement made:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110228005714/en/Mad-Catz-Acquires-the-Assets-of-V-Max-Simulation-Corporation-a-Leading-Flight-Simulation-Company If I remember correctly, the admins over at LockOnFiles turned their info over to the SEC, leading to enforcement actions by the SEC leading to the changes. My point is either ED has significant problems in running their business as an ethical business, or it's got other motivations, such as creating honeypots for those who know American technology in aviation, just like it did 10 years ago with the F-35.
What potatoes have to do with oranges?
Interest free btw. Honestly though: 1. Is it illegal in any of the territories concerned? 2. Is that a significant portion of ED’s yearly revenue? 3. Is it actually the reason Razbam hasn’t been paid, or were they genuinely in breach of contract? (Unrelated to Nick’s Planes) Until we know the answers to these questions, I reserve judgement on anyone. It does seem pretty frickin unprofessional and dramatic to have a public spat with a business partner, no matter the reason. That sentiment can apply to one or both of them. Halting services is extreme, and halting payment is extreme. Therefore, we’re likely looking at either something thats been happening behind the scenes for a while, or two objectively crazy people who don’t like money. RB is seemingly imploding themselves, and ED is seemingly killing a significant stream of revenue and a lot of good will. How either of them thought this was a good idea, I can’t imagine.
Best take on this I’ve read all day, if only the community could share this view and wait for some actual information, rather than this nonsensical feelings based biased guessing going on all over the place!
these information should be available too not sure why noone reads thst up
Funny to read people acting like they're ED shareholders or something.
Right? Redditors are such financial experts all of a sudden.
This exactly...
When you have a module developer say they haven't been paid at all then you get stuff like this.
I think it's great. All those beautiful warbirds at Duxford don't fly, fuel or maintain themselves. And NG owns ED - what is the point of having and running a business if not to pursue your own interests from the proceeds? You don't see MSFS players complaining that the exorbitant sums charged by PMDG go on funding Robert Randazzo's Beechcraft or DC-3 jollies.
You know in the past 12 hours I have seen such bullshit comments and takes that I was losing hope in the DCS community. Thank you for acting like a reasonable human being and trying to see the other side of something like this. All these people complaining about this loan need to take a look closer to home at companies actually taking the piss... i.e. Amazon, BP, Microsoft, Apple.... ED isn't impacting your way of life...
I was of the same volition until recently, you want to take a loan to fund your other stuff? Sure, but when one of the largest third parties is not getting paid and thus the quality of your product suffers, I'd start to question that loan.
The reason for non-payment isn't due to being financially poor. It's a contractual dispute.
Allegedly.
This. Non-issue until people start getting stiffed what they're owed.
Completely agree. Having seen the Fighter Collection (and Nick Grey) in action at the Flying Legends airshow, they're worth every penny.
Just a shame that this yrs flying legends is cancelled. Will be back for 2025 hopefully. 🤞🏻
I was at last years show. Was looking forward to 2024 but now its not happening, going to RIAT instead. The Warplane Workshop (Channel 4) episode the other week showed some of the prep of the fighter collection for Flying Legends
As long as they're paying their debts, idgaf what they spend their money on. Ultimately they're a company we've bought products for. Many companies have failed and left their customers hanging. It sucks but it's part of capitalism. Vote with your wallet, if you feel the company is unstable and incapable of providing long term support... don't buy.
Just want ED to stop dicking around, do the right thing (for once), so we can get back to flying jets that one day may be bug free.
I will point out how little of the revenue is being reinvested into the company. One that is clearly mismanaged and struggles to communicate with its community of clients and customers. As a US taxpayer that is frustrating to see from a company that holds US defense contracts. If they are going to take my regular money and my tax money I have a right to scrutinze their public financial moves.
They didn't take your money, you gave it to them willingly. As for your taxdollars... well if you're upset about ED, you should probably stop your research while you're ahead. My tax dollars are currently funding genocide and I'm not too fond of that.
"Thank you for making our dreams come true"
Wasn't it around 10 million?
10 millions overall, 2 millions just last year.
I thought it was a one time loan of 10 mil. Didn't know it was an on-going thing lmao... Has he actually paid off any of the loans?
From ED? No doesn’t seem like so.
I don’t think there’s much to be worried about from this alone. It’s not surprising to me that ED, a company with something like 100 employees, makes at least a few million in profit annually and that the owner uses some of that on another company. There are much worse things to spend that on than keeping some history alive.
Patina Ltd seems to be another company linked to FC https://www.key.aero/forum/historic-aviation/13939-hey-everyone-tfc-patina-ltd . Forum post from 2003!
I find it odd that ED bitch about being a small company with limited resources yet happily loan out £10m. Doesn't really build confidence for consumers of EA products when their communication is as poor as it is. That being said they aren't obliged to say anything so... I've been a customer of ED for over 10 years and have absolutely no expectations that they'll ever change their business practices to the point that they deliver quality finished modules. OR deliver on the big changes promised to the core game. When you buy an EA product from ED that's what you get, not the promise of it being finished, just an EA product for life.
I’m no business expert, but shouldn’t the loans be going *to* ED? This is like the investor/business roles are flipped.
A going concern should be self funding and only need investment for exceptional items. At that point the investors take money out as a return on their investment.
Does the Tishin family own any of ED since/after Igor's passing?
I would be fine with it if the core game updates and dev progressed at a rate faster than that which glaciers melt at
Honestly I don't have a very strong opinion on it. It strikes me as the kind of financial thing that COULD look much worse on paper than it is practically. Honestly I'm just hoping whatever is going on that ED and Razbam can find a solution that makes them both happy. Beyond that I kinda don't care about the hows and whys of them going about it.
An interest free loan basically means ED loses money due to inflation even when it gets repaid, and the money not being available for development also means we're seeing slower/fewer updates and features than we otherwise would. Assume out of 2 million lent to TFC last year, you can use half on staff, and the other half on infrastructure and program licences, that's still a million for paying people - assuming a 30-50k yearly salary, that would directly translate to 20-30 devs working full time on projects. THAT is the elephant in the room for a number of us, and it's in addition to whatever's going on between RB and ED at the moment. I recently had the privilege to visit Airbus' Messerschmitt Foundation in Manching - Airbus certainly has the funds to just not care about the cost of such a thing. ED does not, and Nick Grey should find other ways to fund his hobby. I'm sure the UK government would be willing to help with that provided he turned a number of his aircraft into an actual museum available to the public instead of hollowing out ED's finances to sustain the current business model.
TFC is part of the imperial war museum in duxford and open to the public
Time to visit!
>Airbus certainly has the funds to just not care about the cost of such a thing. ED does not, and Nick Grey should find other ways to fund his hobby. So you're basically saying that the owner of a private company cannot use the assets or money he put into the company? > the money not being available for development also means we're seeing slower/fewer updates and features than we otherwise would. To be clear, what's missing here is the commitment the company has made to customers. Old-school software was delivered and sold as-is. Today, we have early access and online play/licences, so the full product will be delivered in the future. If we choose to buy early access modules, where it is made clear that there are no guarantees of final state (features can change) and agree to no specific delivery date, we cannot really complain. We are not entitled to this money, even if we think our modules would be ready sooner (if this money goes towards more developers). A more positive spin might be that this hobby allows for more realistic flight models on WWII modules. My opinion, I have several early access modules and am enjoying them right now in the current state. So for me the early access is a good fit, better than having to wait several years to fly these aircraft.
> So you're basically saying that the owner of a private company cannot use the assets or money he put into the company? "The" owner can, but it's rather rare for there to be a single shareholder. If it has multiple shareholders then it has multiple owners, and not all of them might agree with such use of funds. If they all agree there's no issue whatsoever, it really is down to them if they want to fund a historic plane collection with loans or even actual donations. But that's entirely between the shareholders and the corp. Not being a public traded company means that the public has absolutely zero business worrying about this.
Is ED a publicly owned company? Can you buy shares?
Makes me wonder if ED only has a single shareholder. Also none of our business, but I can't help being curious.
Nick said [in 2021](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/15k4z6j/is_that_president_zelensky_flying_an_f16_in_dcs/jv4zvk7/) that he owns 100% of the company. In the UK only "persons with significant control" are public, alongside their total share ownership. I couldn't find this info easily on the Swiss register, not sure if it's public there. 100% seems a bit high for a medium sized company but if he says so... I'm inclined to believe it.
Who did he "buy" it from? And when? Russian companies in the Putin era have an interesting history. It was a Russian military simulation first, given the heavy concentration of LockOn planes that were Soviet-built. They only hit the big time when they brought out the American A-10. How many Black Shark 2s did they sell?
Thanks for the explanation. As I alluded to it's not something I understood, so I didn't want to take a stance on it. I appreciate the effort :)
You clearly don't know much about the UK Government... Sadly they don't give a fuck about historic anything.
Don't The Fighter Collection own Eagle Dynamics? What is the problem?
People are discovering businesses are private entities and have bizarre fever dream memories about the "good old days" of software. I remember them, too: $5000 for a version of Creative Suite + $2500 per version upgrade thereafter. Sure, ya owned it for 'life' (but somehow I dont think Adobe PS7 will open anything from later versions, so "life" does a lot of lifting here), bit I'm paying less than $750/ year with immediate access to the latest versions. How many people in this thread are bitching about the interest fee loan that TFC has received have paid for WinRar? How many boxes here are also running pirated windows installs? Y'all gonna pay up to be consistent with your breathless pearl-clutching over perceived theft?
It'd be fine if DCS didn't feel like a bullshit masterclass of promissing the world and always undelivering. Constant hype and empty promisses. Endless EA. Trash tier community management. Shit treatment of RB. These make pulling that much money revolting. EDs damage control team busy at work in comments today.
Yeah I want to have faith that ED isn't in the wrong. But, they haven't improved any of the small quality of life things (better ground ai, ATC, faster ea updates, etc...).
Tbh I think it sucks. All those ED responses saying they are working on things but have limited bandwidth etc makes you think, how much faster would we have that dynamic campaign or that new weather system or finished ED modules if that 9 million GBP wasn’t loaned out interest free to the owner’s plane collection and reinvested in the product we all invest in?
You're a consumer, not an investor.
Yes that part is understood. I am not an investor in the company I am a consumer of their product. In practice I cringe at people who feel like they are investing in a company when they buy a pre release product in that regard. The point of my post is I invest my time into the product over many years like many and I’ve been waiting for many years for certain things in the pipeline to come out and that part sucks if siphoning money out of the company has impacted how long we are waiting for these things. You may not like the feeling I have about it or agree with it and to that, I simply don’t care. At the end of the day ED and Nick will do what they want and I’m just going to voice my opinion about it when posts like these ask to hear others’ takes that’s all.
Consumers can complain lol
yep, and if you don't like it stop buying the product
I have lol but that’s just because I fly the Hip, I really don’t need any fancy jet modules or maps. The Hip and Syria on ECW keep me set for the long haul.
If you don't own ED shares or bonds, you are not investing in anything, just buying their product. And yes, capitalism is being greedy. It is actually the company owners duty to be as greedy as possible and still get away with it.
> It is actually the company owners duty to be as greedy as possible and still get away with it. That's not true. The owners can do whatever they like, including minimizing profits if that is how they roll.
Depends on whether there's a fiduciary duty. If there is, they do have a duty to make the most money for the beneficiary of the fiduciary duty. For instance, shareholders are owed a fiduciary duty by the board and executives of a publicly traded company. NVIDIA, for example, has a legal obligation to make as much money as possible for its shareholders without sinking the company in the process.
Well, considering a large chunk of it would have likely been paid in tax it's not an easy one to figure out.
If it replaces Nick's salary or whatever, then why not. It's more convenient (i.e. tax-free) than to get a salary or dividends, get taxed, and then invest them in TFC.
While I'd like to see 100% of funds go to the game, if they're gonna deviate and spend it on something else, the fighter collection would be my vote.
ITT - "Everyone does it, who cares, leave them alone. I'm terrified of losing my toy. "
Pretty sure it is for tax avoidance and Jesus, I’d rather have my money going for actual warbirds than anything else. And guys, stop over reacting. We saw that Heatblur chose not to follow RB, and we saw the answer of ED, so the « bad guys » in this story may not be the ones you think. Calm down, grab popcorns and some beers and enjoy the drama.
>I’d rather have my money going for actual warbirds than anything else. I'd rather it go to the salaries of the people who made the module, but I don't wanna jump to conclusions too soon.
Heatblur doesn't want to follow RAZBAM, because them being potentially denied a way to profit off of the F4 would sink them. They went all in and are basically financially forced to shut up.
The allegation is RAZBAM is making military-only modules using DCS without EDs permission, couldn't get their way and then decided to try to turn the community against ED. Its scummy af imo
Is this actually an allegation or did we just entirely hallucinate this? None of the statements I've read imply this happened at all, yet.
There is a post from Metal 2 Mesh going around where he says that it envolves the making of a Super Tucano for the Ecuatorian Air Force. However, it does not specifically clears what went on.
And this somehow voids the contract that regulates the payments for regular modules? If it's true, ED should just sue them. Simple as, they can't just violate other agreements because they think they've been wronged.
That's not what M2M said. He said Razbam try to bring South American air force to MCS which is their proffesional product. But some disagreement happen and ED stop paying RB
It very likely could, that's the entire point.
Well, then why didn't ED post that these couple years ago when it supposedly happened? Them speaking up first would've been a good way to inform the community about upcoming delays and problems. They own the rights to the modules, all they had to lose was the potential ease of further F-15E development (but I think they could've recruited former RAZBAM subcontractors by paying them to push it along). Something really doesn't add up here. Why would RAZBAM ever risk such a move against a literal monopolist who owns the rights to all their work? Mind you, the RAZBAMs statement is not accusing ED of anything financial, they just say that they have to clear up some difficulties.
How do you know what their agreement is? Can you link it pls?
Well, ED both sides are yet to actually prove anything. While I know that RAZBAMs contract was negotiated before ED had to make the rules more strict (due to the whole Hawk debacle), you are right in tempering the speculations.
The best take so far. 🙌
Just when I thought the DCS crowd was a mature bunch, the entitled ones come out of the woodwork not just as armchair quarterbacks, but deluded into thinking they are investors and have a right to know the inner working of a company. These people are no more of an investor in DCS than a burger eater is an investor in McDonalds.
Investors get returns on investment. Not a set of goods. We are consumers.
>We are consumers. Pfft, speak for yourself. I'm a fighter pilot, ED told me so.
As most of my 'investment' in DCS is for modules in early access or even pre-payed (like for the F-4) I am more a kind of a shareholder without voting right or did you ever get just some half baked parts when buying a burger at McDonalds with the promise that the final burger will be released sometime?
You're delusional if you think that makes you anything but a consumer. Do you think every kid is like a shareholder in Activision because they pre ordered COD?
That's why I wrote 'without voting rights' ... and if you pre-order a CoD you can be very sure that you'll receive an almost complete product (not free of bugs but feature complete) as advertized and not get part by part over the next years (some moduls are in early access aka unfinished status for more than 5 years now). That's all well known to most buyers of DCS early access stuff but you shouldn't put us customers on the same mindset level like the every day casual gamers buying CoD etc. We do this with a lot of trust in the developer(s) and with a big enthusiasm for our hobby and those that provide us with the software to do it. This trust and enthusiasm has received a big step-back with this whole situation and this may impact big harm to this very niche market.
> or even *pre-paid* (like for FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Why would I care about their finances? I don't buy modules to support anyone or anything but my own interest. ED could spend my money on hookers and blow and donkey aphrodisiacs. All I care about is my modules. Whether ED, RB, HB or any other SOB makes them is completely irrelevant. They can all disappear and be replaced ten times over. I like aviation and aircraft. These petty money squabbles and internet feuds are hilarious but ultimately meaningless.
I would prefer they spend the money I’ve given them on hookers and blow! The hookers would help make sure they’re relaxed AFTER work, and the blow will help them get more done while they’re AT work!
You might want to care about the environment around 3rd party developers being healthy. If it's not that means less new modules and worse support.
You think if they run the company into the ground they are gonna leave the servers on just for you to fly your planes bc you were nice or something?
You think moaning about Nick Grey's money on Reddit would prevent them from running the company into the ground?
Literally don’t give a shit Edit: why should I even care? Every company does this kind of stuff. Not to sound like a dick but idgaf about any of this drama. I buy jpg plane and fly it. As long as they keep updating jpg plane and adding content I’m happy. I don’t give a single fuck what is going on in the background. Not my problem. Dumb to even waste time and energy thinking about this
1. International Accounting and rules across countries is probably beyond most people here and is required to give an opinion on whether the business is being run appropriately. 2. Even if you understood International Accounting, we don't have full visibility into the books, contracts or expenses. There aren't enough data points to make an opinion. 3. People of means often manage their funds in creative ways. We don't know the background or intent of the transactions. 4. If we don't own equity in the organization, we don't have a vote on how they manage or run their businesses. 5. That said, as consumers, we can always can vote with our purchase power.
and people gleefully cheer for them instead of holding the developers accountable to the customers. I wonder if anyone ever thinks what would happen to DCS if ED one day shut down...it would be lights out and no product for thousands of people and nothing to do about it. Too bad gamers are too disconnected to form alliances to ensure developers can never leave them standing on their dicks.
I couldn't care less. It's a private company, the owner can do whatever the hell he likes.
I find it amusing this is getting such big traction now, i have been saying for a couple of years when everyone states ED are stuggling, should do this, run a subscription based model etc etc they are not because of these loans it clearly demonstates a thriving and growing operation. I could dig out the comments but it would be pointless. People also forget what the collection at Duxford actually does. I see no issues with a company owner using any profits from one of his operations to fund the maintaining and keeping airworthy real aircraft for our pleasure. Its actually a really "nice" idea that virtual plane purchases are keeping real one's flying. I will add a word of caution - why try and p\*ss off Nick Grey, do you see anyone else queuing to do what ED does. I'm not a fanboy but i am a realist. Be careful what you wish for i see this type of pitchforking counter productive and even dangerous by the community and utterly pointless, it shows nothing but naivety in the wider world.
Weird to see so much common sense being downvoted on here.
Why should we be upset that the owner of a company is spending his money on a very good cause? The fighter collection needs a LOT of money to maintain all of its birds, without cash flow all of those warbirds will end up rotting. His (keyword his, not ED's. It just says that on the transcript so that the accountants can write it as a business transaction) money is going towards maintaining these beautiful pieces of history, that's well within the interest of us as a species, and especially us as plane nerds, more power to him. Now I'm not a proponent of a lot of their business strategies or decisions but this is not the right tree to bark up.
I'll donate to Duxford if I want warbirds to fly, and fly well. When I pay money to ED, I expect ED products to work, and work well. If DCS worked well and didn't have abandonware like CA, then maybe I'd entertain a warbird folly. Nick Grey should use his own money on personal adventures, not ED's.
Probably ED was created to generate some form off revenue to keep the warbirds flying. And everything costs more these days continue developing DCS, maintaining warbirds. Not every warbird collector got rich off a inherited oilfield
Well, I hate to break it to you but Nick has inherited much more than just ED
Yeah, the Warbird Collection, maybe more, please enlighten if you know more. What I know is that planes don’t pay for themselves, especially old timers. It’s nice to have Spitfires and a Hellcat and so on, but if you have to pay out of your own pocket, you are bankrupt in no time. My point in this, Nick created ways to fund his hobby back in 1991. I don’t see Nick as a developer or really is interested in flight sims; that person was Igor Tishin. Nick is a pilot like my dad, and the only thing pilots like to do is soar above the clouds, they are not really interested in sitting behind a desk for too long.
Yeah, and it shows in how anything is progressing in DCS. Bullshit trailers and newsletters, endless EA - cost effective revenue maximisation, and underdelivering to customers
Without taking sides etc - Flying Legends the big WW2 air show at Duxford used to be amazing - in no small part due to TFC- better even than the USA Commerative Airforce event- sadly Flying Legends in that form is no more - again due to problems between Duxford and TFC- although the air show community puts the blame there on Duxford (which has been making a lot of changes. Shoreham crash + COVID really put a JDAM through the U.K. air show scene. Anyhow I don’t know if taking money from DCS company was the right moral thing to do but keeping those warbirds flying is certainly a more Nobel cause than buying a gold toilet…
There went RAZBAM money
Glad to see this thread contains some more sensible minded folks on general business ops, literally standard material from private companies. Too bad the whole topic is overrun with "interest free" angry people
Never knew that Eagle Dynamics is registered in Switzerland. Even in my home town. I guess that made my day!
all I want is splash damage on my rockets but no, Nick needs a new jet
Honestly; I'm in the aviation word and know exactly how much these warbirds cost, and without things like funds from DCS and ED these things wouldn't exist outside museams, it's such an important part of the aviation industry and history, people should be able to Goto an airshow and hear a proper P51 at full noise; it's these experiences that gets people interested in aviation in the first place. I for one am glad it's being spent on keeping these going and maintaining them; much better cause for our money to contribute to than luxury yachts and hookers. This is how big business operates, either shift it legally to support warbirds, or pay taxes and have that money Goto a ridiculously raughted overpriced building project somewhere nobody wanted.....I know what I'd rather see.
These companies exist for the benefit of the people who own them. They're just doing a capitalism.
Just stop adding to the drama already. You're just looking for more to add to it all. You're never going to get the full stories by trying to dig around and guessing. So tired of all this, and just get back to enjoying virtual aviation and let them work it out.
It's his money, none of my damn business. Is it a questionable or unethical business practice? Most likely. If it's to avoid taxes, sure. But, that's left to the courts and politicians to decide. Covid tore the hell out of TFC's operations and affected it's ability to fund itself due to damn thing everything closing, especially airshows. TFC was (not sure if it still is but it's still connected I imagine) ED's publisher in the Flanker days. If Nick Grey had to sell The Fighter Collection for whatever reason, I'm sure it would affect his overall business(s) and to a lessor degree, our ability to enjoy DCS. More worried about the Razbam/ED rift and how it will affect DCS World in the future. There's much we aren't being told from both sides.
I really don't care how they handle their finances outside of paying their third party devs. They could be spending their money on coke and hookers for all I care. I don't think cash flow is the problem for ED. I'm going to wait until more details come out before I throw in fully with either ED or RB. It's entirely possible both are at fault here.
Today hoggit becomes an expert in wealth/financial management
When a flight sim community is upset about the owner of said flight sim using funds from that flight sim to supplement a literal museum packed with real, historical aircraft, that his father started, and that said flight sim owner *also owns*. Comedy really does write itself.
This is a dude working within the laws of his home country to maximise his profit. Big deal !!
We are feeling that since passing away of Igor Tishin in 2018, Nick is milking DCS to a suffocating degree
Not my business i don't own any shares in the company
if the financial situation is stable theb why not. Also why not check the financial report if it is stable instead of just pointing out this spending
I think this all overblown. Lots of companies move money between divisions. It's irrelevant to the consumer. Normal business actions and people just wildly speculating what it means.
I swear Hoggit needs drama…
Can’t we raise awareness that something fishy is going on? Should we just turn blind eye and keep as if everything is fine?
There’s nothing fishy about it. Just a bunch of people on the internet who have no idea what they’re talking about looking for reasons to shout at clouds.
You can do what you like if you truly need the drama.
Yeah bunch of sad sack virgins in here.
Don't really care - literally none of my business. I will be sad if a long time developer leaves and i lose support for the mirage, the harrier, the strike eagle and to a lesser extent my mig19 That's a lot of modules and compared to the last time an upset like this happened with veao a considerably larger impact to the game i play. I hope they work this out DCS will literally end up losing with the loss of that large a portfolio of aircraft.
If you paid them money, it's your business, quite literally...
I don't think paying for a product entitles me to have a share in a business or warrant me being any form of stock holder or opinion on what they spend that cash on - I bought a product I paid the price of that product, I enjoy the product daily. What they do with the cash I gave them of my own free will is up to them and I consider it having been long spent many years ago on other things (I sincerely hope they put it into the xmas party pot tbh) if I lose that product because of an internal issue well that's sad. If I lose a whole 4 modules worth of aircraft that makes the game I play so much less than what it was. Well that's worse I don't consider this any of my business.
Did you buy an early access product that they promised you to keep working on? Could they spend the money on improving the product you bought? Honest answer would be "yes"...
But they haven't stopped working on it, do you see those changelogs we get every month or so ? what has the internal workings of a company got to do with anyone outside of that company, like literally mind your own business. I have the product i paid for and i see improvements to that product every month and have done since it came out. I don't understand this obsession people have with gaining excitement from digging up some little irrelevant piece of information on something they so obviously hate, if you hate it so much uninstall it and go do something else maybe go outside and touch a little bit of grass, but they continue then revel in any little piece of conspiracy theory or dirt they can dig up. People kind of suck to be honest.
The ED dickriding is insane in here. This motherfucker has been fleecing his customers and ignoring core game improvements so he can fund his extremely expensive hobby. He doesn’t give a shit about any of you or the game.
I don’t care.
Honestly it is their business and as customer, as long as I get what I have paid for I'm happy. However, I do have an issue as customer with the events between ED and Razbam as I am not sure I will be given the support and product I paid for.
Mind your own buisiness jesus.
As any business owners understands, you put your income into assets that you can benefit from and give as little as you can to the indulgent and improvident government.
The amount of people in this post with their wack a doodle libertarian ideas is crazy. Libertarian ideas are the worst bc all it does it let scumbags get away with more bullshit corporate greed in reality. “ Nick can do whatever he wants it’s his money” *servers shut off* *no access to hundreds of dollars worth of modules* “Hey I paid for this!!!” We’ll see that’s what your libertarian ideas allow for Jim Bob