23.5.2021 – 11:42z

CaptainSim B777-200 And Its Controversy

UPDATE (24.5.2021): CaptainSim made a statement, admitting that it is was a mistake to limit livery creators to publishing their liveries only through the Aircraft Configuration Editor, and allowed everyone to publish their liveries for the aircraft anywhere, including Flightsim.to.

CaptainSim has been in the community for a while now, to be a little more exact, they’ve been around for around 22 years already. While in the past few years, CaptainSim’s main focus was on developing aircraft addons for Prepar3D and Flight Simulator X, they recently transitioned and put their main focus on the new Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Their first release for the new platform being a rendition of a Boeing 777-200, it did for sure not bring CaptainSim the feedback and results they were expecting. If you want to learn more about the addon itself, and not about the controversy around it, we recommend you to read our other article on the topic here.

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Once CaptainSim first announced the release of the aircraft, the first wave of criticism from the community appeared quick. The reason was not only the fact, that the aircraft was released with the systems of the default Boeing 747 rendition, but also that CaptainSim was asking about €30 for the addon. Here, it was made clear by the developer through their forums, that they have no intentions of making custom, or enhancing current, systems for the aircraft in the future.

The developer explained this decision (to use default Boeing 747 systems) through their Facebook page with the following statement:

Advanced systems programing takes years and that 777 could cost $100+

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CaptainSim response to comment on their Facebook page

After this happened, one would think, that CaptainSim would wait a bit for things in the community to calm down. The opposite happened, and just a few days later, Flightsim.to, the biggest source of Microsoft Flight Simulator mods, addons, and liveries, published a press release stating that CaptainSim was taking legal actions against them prohibiting them from hosting user-created liveries for the aircraft.

(…) Yesterday, we received a legal takedown request prohibiting us from hosting user-created liveries for the B777-200ER. CaptainSim points to their license terms and claims that they are the rightful copyright holder of all liveries. To this end, the company refers to their – in our opinion – highly questionable license terms (…)

Flightsim.to Press Release from May 22nd, 2021.

In other words, CaptainSim was claiming that all liveries, including the ones created by the community, for the aircraft, are property of CaptainSim and they can withhold them from distribution at their own discretion, based on their license terms. Us being flight simmers, we can’t judge whether this is legal or not.

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This action from CaptainSim resulted in an even bigger wave of criticism pointed towards the developer from the community. From companies who have been around for years, through livery creators and content creators, to members of the community, altogether just being disappointed with the developer’s actions and approach.

Parallel 42, for example, has earlier today taken to their Discord to announce following:

We stand behind community sentiment and will no longer consider Immersion packages or other tie-ins with CaptainSim products. Not only is this action in poor taste, but it’s also likely not legal. #EmbraceCreators

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Parallel 42 Announcement from May 23rd

In addition to #EnbraceCreators, a rather satiric #BoycottCaptainSim has appeared on the internet in conjunction with a “True Colors” livery created by IFR Liveries. This hashtag is highly promoted between livery creators within the community rather than members or developers.

Some livery creators even stated, that CaptainSim has stolen their work.

CaptainSim has stolen liveries from me and other creators that we put hours of work into and then claimed that it’s his, please spread this message. #BoycottCaptainSim

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Redhill through his Twitter account

As a result of such feedback from the community, CaptainSim has decided to remove their release announcement post from Twitter. The post on their Facebook page still remains there.

It needs to be stressed, that the developer makes it still possible for livery creators to submit their liveries to their ACE (Aircraft Configuration Editor) catalog through their website, and so make their liveries available through there. CaptainSim explains these actions to be present as they want to avoid low-quality liveries being published for the aircraft which may afterwards result in poor performance or just bad experience.

We feel it is important to mention, that FSNews tries to remain unbiased on this topic, and will continue following CaptainSim’s development closely in the future. This article was written based on information available to us, and we did our best to avoid making any conclusions against the developer, or any other party.

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