After the somewhat poorly received release of Captain Sim’s Boeing 777 for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the developer found itself in yet some more turmoil regarding the new plane during the last weekend. The initial debate about the developer and the plane were sparked when it turned out the CS 777 functionality is paired with the default 747 functionality in MSFS.
Flightsim.to, popular for its many freeware assets, informed its community that Captain Sim had sent several legal takedown requests for Captain Sim 777 liveries. As per the statement from Flightsim.to, Captain Sim claimed that all liveries for the CS 777 need to be distributed via their own tool, called ACE, and that nobody is allowed to publish the liveries elsewhere. The company also claimed that all liveries created by the community remain a property of Captain Sim. As such, Flightsim.to started an inquiry in to its and Captain Sim’s rights, since the latter company was threatening further legal action if the liveries would not be taken down.
Following this, many members of the community on several platforms expressed their dissatisfaction with Captain Sim’s legal threats and policy. This prompted the developer itself to respond to the matter at hand on its own forums, in an attempt to explain why they felt the need to request for liveries to be taken down. According to the company, most of the issues they had with the liveries were related to the quality of the liveries itself. The company named examples such as errors and flaws from using an outdated (FSX/P3D) paintkit, using wrong DDS formats, and using liveries that were previously available for the P3D and FSX version of the plane and were deemed ‘lower’ and ‘awful’ quality by Captain Sim itself. The developer went on to state that they have taken it upon themselves to ‘fix’ all these wrongful liveries, and uploaded these to ACE. However, the company did so in a manner that by many was deemed more spiteful rather than helpful, and the Captain Sim policy continued to create debate. It even inspired some users to get rather creative at making liveries.
This led to the company retreating later in the weekend, with a short statement on their forums again. The company stated that all free liveries for the Captain Sim Boeing 777 are “welcome to be posted anywhere“. The company also said it would reach out to Flightsim.to, and make the paint kit publicly available per today. The liveries for the plane are currently available on Flightsim.to. FSElite will also have our review of the Captain Sim 777-200 Base Pack published here in the coming days.
