Its very unfortunate for the people who have "bought the cat in the sack" as we say here in Norway. Have any of the another company customers tried to contact another company about this issue? What do they have to say about it? another company is the legal entity you have a contract with and technically those are the people you should bugger about it. Perhaps they will be more forthcoming when it comes to stating the reason for them not being able to provide a patch for the (arguably broken) product they sell

Quote:


That is not the best possible answer.

I understand this but what has this to do with me as a customer? Legally it does not really matter where I bought the product, it still is yours and you still cached in your royalties. The box states (C) Captain Sim 2008. Just imagine Mercedes or Toyata giving a statement like that because they cancelled one of their vendors agreements.

I am a software development manager - my work is judged by how efficiently I deliver solutions to our customers, not by how smart my excuses are for failing to do so.

Hi all,

I have to agree on the legal position - for the boxed product, the contract you have is not with Captain Sim (in fact I don't think the publisher Just Flight has a legal obligation to you either); you do have a contract with the retailer.

Having said that, in the last 30 years of computer use, I don't think I've ever come across a situation quite like this and I'm very disappointed in both Just Flight and Captain Sim.  I've just returned to Flight Sim after many years where I've simply been too busy with work and family.  I decided to get some add-ons this time (in the past I've only used the default and freeware aircraft), and I tend to like a boxed product (and manual); maybe I'm just old fashioned.

I've never bought a piece of software either games or productivity where the updates (if any) are not freely offered (except for a clear change in version whereby the product is marketed as version 2.0, 3.0).  This doesn't even parallel corporate software purchasing (where you invariably do pay for an ongoing support contract) - in such a case, where the original vendor/publisher is unable to support the product any longer, the developer would ordinarily be thrilled to continue support (for a fee), but that isn't even possible here (without buying the same thing a second time).

Based on this experience, I didn't think to check whether a boxed product would be supported or not (I bought from Amazon, so I didn't see the statement on the Just Flight site saying that they only went up to version 4.4 until I went looking for updates), nor had I read Captain Sim's reasons for not supporting boxed products until after the purchase.  I know many will say here that I should have checked - I would have had there been any indication that there were different products.

So now I have bought two Captain Sim products and feel let down by both companies another company & CS (I got 757 and 727 Captain).  Obviously I know now that the only way to buy Captain Sim stuff is direct, but with the bad taste this has left in my mouth, I'm not sure I would be willing to buy either company's products in the future.

Sorry for the rant, will stop now and rant no more!

Hi,

feel abandoned again.
1st there was fs9 update 2.2 only download (another company was told fs9 was not supported anymore). So i switched over to fsx. Now i read that fsx boxed version is also not supported by any updates
What about the other CS products sold by another company?
Twice is enough.
Goodbye CS!!!!!

Feel sorry for these paying customers...caught in the middle...it appears both another company and CS have proved themeselves to be rather "myopic" in their mutual contract negotiations w/o much concern for the long-term goodwill of their paying customers whose only mistake (by no means they should be faulted for this) was to buy the Boxed edition from a CS authorized (and supposedly reputable) retailer...

It's to be also noted that CS has needed two additional (free) upgrades to improve the 4.4 version to a generally acceptable and flyable state...

I think the problem is logistical. Unless another company turns over their customer base who bought the 757 with order numbers to CS, which I doubt they have or will do, how can CS verify customer claims? There may be a way to build an interrogator in the update installer, to verify a valid customer, against another company's copyright protection scheme, but that may violate another company's copyrights. The only other way would be manual, the customer would have to send CS a copy of the email receipt from another company, which CS can verify ownership, but that will take resources that CS doesn't have or is not willing to provide. So there are no easy answers here, and the customer is caught in the middle.

I have to say that I think this is really quite outrageous. I have never heard of any software developer refusing to update a legally purchased product based on the distribution channel.

Obviously Captain Sim agreed to have Just Flight publish its software some time ago. Whether they had a falling out is irrelevant, as they still have a duty to support the end user /purchaser of their product regardless of the distribution channel. They undoubtedly still receive royalties (or did receive royalties) for the purchase of this product, and to leave the user "hanging" without an update is extremely unprofessional. All this baloney about "supporting the developer" is hogwash - Captain Sim made a knowing and intelligent decision to publish via Just Flight, probably to get its product out to users who would otherwise not have heard of CS, myself included.

I was thinking of buying the 707 and 727 from Captain Sim, but with this kind of "customer service" I will stay far away. Other developers for FSX (without naming names) do not engage in this sort of unprofessional behavior which serves only to punish the end user. If CS has a problem with Just Flight, that is between CS and Just Flight. The end user should not be punished for this dispute, and CS should continue to support its product no matter what the distribution channel. If CS wants to stop publishing any of its future products through Just Flight, that's entirely CS's choice - but leaving the end user hanging is not only legally questionable, it's bad business. It would cost CS nothing to make their users happy (there is no variable cost associated with making the patch available to another company users, since it's not physical media) and instead they will lose business, at least certainly mine.

To all you jailhouse lawyers out there who are trying to quote contract law to make excuses for Captain Sim, how about we just focus on simple ethical behavior.
I own the boxed version of 757 Captain from Just Flight.  
Captain Sim’s name, copyright, “trademark Aircraft Configuration Editor” brag, and verbiage is all over that product.
You can assume that Captain Sim profited by either getting a piece of every unit sold by Just Flight, or else getting a pretty hefty licensing fee in the original deal that allowed Just Flight to box and sell the product.
For them to walk away from supporting the product just because they apparently couldn’t reach terms on an extension of that agreement in no way should absolve them from continuing to support the product that has their name on it.
And it does need support.  The 757 (my last and final purchase of a Captain Sim product ever) is, like most Captain Sim products, annoyingly flawed.  One only has to read the forums on any CS product (most notably the 727) to see that purchasers are constantly forced to either accept bad behavior by their purchases, or devise workarounds that should have been fixed by the manufacturer, the efforts of CoolP and Markoz notwithstanding.  
I own the 727, the C-130, the 707 and the 757.  Each of them requires more time and effort to fix, update, kludge and repair than to actually fly, which is why I say the 757 is my last CS purchase.  The support just isn’t there… and I'm done buying the hype that THE NEXT plane is really, really ready for the public.
CS has a great publicity machine that makes every new aircraft sound like the Second Coming.  Delivering on those promises is where they fall down.
But the real point here is that hundreds (thousands?) of us have purchased this product on the Captain Sim name, and for them to walk away under a pretense speaks volumes about their corporate ethos, and what you can expect in the future if you continue to deal with them.