MScenery is history, finally

[Navy Chief]

 

[heywooood]

one small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind

 

[Tom Clayton]

The official announcement:

MSFS Marketplace Partner Announcement

We want to share an important update regarding content available in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024 in-game Marketplaces. Over time, we have received a significant amount of feedback from the community regarding products developed by Mscenery. After receiving a large number of...

forums.flightsimulator.com

 

[Tom Clayton]

My own reaction:

 

[tiger1962]

1) low quality of Mscenery content
2) lacking information in product descriptions and misleading images
3) validity of high user scores

I wonder if MS-Xbox-Asobo will regard this as a one-off situation, or will they apply stricter rules for all partners in future?
I seriously doubt that any other developer is guilty of all three counts above, but in my opinion Sim Federation should be subject to the same scrutiny.

 

[roger-wilco-66]

LOL I had to check what this was all about. I found that the only model I was ever interested in was the OH-6, but it was so abysmal in the screenshots that I immediately put that in the "forget it" bin.

Good riddance, I guess. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[Spook48]

I don,t understand what all the fuzz is about. I couldn,t care less if its sold in the marketplace. I won,t buy it anyway.

 

[DennyA]

The fuss was that MScenery was inflating its reviews. Great planes would sit there with 38-60 reviews of 3.8 to 4.6 average after weeks on the market, and MScenery would have 141 5 star reviews within days of their releases. So new pilots or people new to marketplace would sort by score and think these inexpensive planes were great.

If they wanted to sell crap (their planes were 3D models purchased from 3D websites with basic animations and panels added) that's their prerogative. But cheating by gaming the review system with bots/fake reviews turned their planes from sh*tty products to flat-out scams.

 

[Tom Clayton]

They also had severely doctored screenshots - especially the cover thumbnails. That blatant dishonesty should have been pulled on day one.

 

[heywooood]

for me it was the fact that they were misrepresenting their products in order to make sales to folks who would not have otherwise purchased their crap - which amounts to theft in my view...and not in the widely overused, hyperbolic sense that the term is often used by the FS community - but ACTUAL theft

 

[Spook48]

yeah . reviews. I always try to make up my own mind and even those doctored screenshots can't convince me to buy.

 

[DennyA]

yeah . reviews. I always try to make up my own mind and even those doctored screenshots can't convince me to buy.

Yeah, MScenery was never a threat to you. But we have to protect the lazy and inattentive from the bad guys.

 

[wvernonc]

Yippie!!!!!!!!

 

[heywooood]

ultimately - it seems to me that MS, by granting access to their Marketplace to just about anyone for just about anything, without any apparent quality or fidelity assurance - fails to understand the public perception that anything that does get in to THEIR Marketplace MUST have been subjected to some kind of QA aside from simply checking to see if it met the most embarrassingly basic functionality in the sim.
I've heard a few newcomers to MSFS say essentially - 'it's in their Marketplace so it has to be good, right?' and it should mean that but it doesn't. And when it doesn't MS has failed to understand that it's taken by the community as a mark against MS as much as it is the developer who took advantage of that trust.
What they have done with Marketplace to me, is akin to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum accepting models made from rusty tin cans taped together with pallet slats for wings - in the case of Mscenery. You know - it's an 'airplane' so it's in.

 

[Cyber7799]

The review botting roped me in early on. Think my Su-35 has about 7 secs of flight time before it was sent to trashcan