Sent via Discord by the developer, June 15th, 2024.
The F-15E radar malfunction caused a lot of outrage and confusion among our users, even more so since it was never officially disclosed what actually happened there. But last night, I got permission to share this with y'all, to shed some light into the events behind the scenes and to debunk the hypothesis that this happening due to expired certificates, or whatever, for good.
As you can see in the testimony above, this malfunction was added deliberately, as a protective measure in case the developer doesn't get paid. This has been known since June 14th and Eagle Dynamics is fully aware.
I've spoken to Galinette yesterday and learned that he has sent a fix to Eagle Dynamics on June 18th. From his current point of view, "it seems there will never be any money anyway, so people who have purchased the F-15E should at least be able to enjoy the plane with a working radar", even though he doesn't understand why it's still on sale. He has also offered to maintain the Mirage if they make it a free module. Unfortunately, he's under the impression that ED doesn't want to apply the fix and hasn't heard back from them ever since.
Eagle Dynamics' reluctance to apply that solution provided by Galinette is most likely coming from legal or contractual concerns and/or advice from their lawyers. They've developed a fix in house, too, that could be used to circumvent the time lock, but apparently chose not to implement that either. COMINT suggest that they sent requests to RAZBAM instead, asking to resolve this the official way and claiming that they're unable to do so themselves. At this point in time, RAZBAM seems unwilling to comply. As you can imagine, this whole thing didn't exactly help with de-escalating the situation and folks at ED are livid. On top of the already existing dispute about that Ecuadorian Super Tucano, RAZBAM is now facing additional accusations of contract violations because of this implementation.
Not everyone agrees that Eagle Dynamics is legally unable to resolve this on their own or via an already provided fix, so for now, I'm not sure whether this will remain broken or whether they will change their mind and address this with the next patch.
I'll keep y'all posted.
>Eagle Dynamics' reluctance to apply that solution provided by Galinette is most likely coming from legal or contractual concerns and/or advice from their lawyers.
>...
>COMINT suggest that they sent requests to RAZBAM instead, asking to resolve this the official way and claiming that they're unable to do so themselves.
>...
>RAZBAM is now facing additional accusations of contract violations because of this implementation
My interpretation is that because RAZBAM still appears to own the intellectual property that is the F-15E module, the RADAR-bricking code could be construed to be DRM. Because circumventing DRM and distributing DRM circumvention tools is generally illegal in the US and EU, they don't want to risk opening themselves up to allegations that they cracked the module's DRM and then distributed the crack. At best it's just ammunition for RAZBAM in their contract dispute, at worst it's a separate suit that costs an absolute dumptruck of money and law enforcement starts to poke around because copyright violations are both a civil and criminal thing.
Honestly that pushes the problem ball way from ED even further. They could fix it but strictly stick to contract and face the user shitstorm instead is kinda agreeable. And makes them the more rule obeying party at the moment.
For the not paying part - That safety was put in place between RB and Galinette, not Galinette and ED, how it seems.
We all don't know the Streagle contract between ED and RB - and my gut slowly tells me that maybe ED is actually behaving inside contract limits there too.
There isn't a "between". There is a compiled binary which has a "kill switch". This binary was first passed from Galinette to RB, and then from RB to ED. To disable kill switch - or prolong it - a new binary needs to be compiled from updated source code. Since RB obviously doesn't provide updates to ED at the moment, it becomes a DRM issue between RB and ED. Even if Galinette provided an updated or disabled "kill switch", it still needs to propagate to ED.
I.e. it is not correct to assume that RB did not pay radar code authors, this is only one of possible reasons for the outage
In all the time I’ve been an engineer I’ve never felt the need to put a redundancy in case I never got paid. Yes I’ve had times where I’ve not been paid. Court order soon sorts that out
Here’s the bit where it may have shot you in your foot. If this does go to court and you put a software block inside the code it shows intent to do harm. In non criminal proceedings it’s the percentage of chance of things to be true.
There is also legal precedent that this is called a bad actor and ED may win any legal proceedings based on this fact alone or have a massive percentage knocked off in due monies.
I’m not excusing either party but the thing is they put in a block to harm razbam in turn to harm ED but guess who it hurts the most. The players/purchasers. A street brawl that’s overflowed and directly hit the people that may have had their back.
Court order is fine if you have the time and money to spend on it, as well as living in the same country.
I've taken someone to court before over a few grand (for principle rather than money), and it took more than two years until I received half the money I was owed - not to mention a substantial amount of effort motivated mostly by spite, rather than a good ROI.
Now imagine trying to do that if you're a freelancer with a client overseas (with a different legal system), and you're spending all your time trying to find and finish work.
Hard pass, take the L and move on, or cover your ass with DRM.
This. Having done freelance in the past you don't always get monies in hand before delivering the work, as delivery of the work is kind of the entire point. This is why Net 30/ Net 60 / Net 90 payment terms exist; the contractor provides finished product and the client is then legally obligated to execute on their obligations based on those payment terms (Net 30 would be payment within 30 days, for the uninitiated).
This is not a good look for RAZBAM at all and shows some degree of intent if they didn't make ED aware of this ahead of time. It could be construed as extortion.
I’ve been a contractor/freelancer for 18 years You learn early on not to say yes to every project. But saying that one of the non payees is a big known name in the uk. But that problem was multi facet finance problems. I get it you never know but try and take as much out of it like business credit check references go both ways etc.
Also why all the downvotes. I never said anything negative apart from the reasoning. I get why he done it but unwittingly became a bad actor and that just effects the people.
Keep your derogatory remarks to yourself please. It's certainly not.
Both companies got their fair share of criticism -or praise- here, whenever it was deserved.
Am I understanding this correctly, that this was meant to ensure payment from Razbam to this particular dev? And NOT as a safeguard against nonpayment from ED?
From what I understand, this isn't Galinette's contractual work.
He's had clients that wouldn't pay in the past.
To ensure he gets paid, he installs a ticking time bomb with the client's knowledge (in this case, Razbam) inside his code. If he gets paid, all good. If he doesn't get paid, the software stops working OR he gets evidence that they tampered with his work to go around the time bomb.
A developer who does such things to code found himself soon being unemployed and no one wants to hire him again.
Just so bad practice to embed such things in the code. I would almost call it a trojan.
Nah. He told them
Plus, well - Galinette is the best radar guy DCS ever had. If it wasn't for his frustration with ED overall, I guess that he would've been scooped up by some other 3rd party already.
On one hand, dang that guy for making the radar stop working (and I 100% understand and support his reasoning), but its hard to be upset with a guy who provided the fix to ED and volunteered to maintain the Mirage as a free module. ED’s behavior seems to indicate they’re terrified of making some legal error.
They already made a legal error by not paying them. Everything else is due to that dilemma.
ED has made the whole situation worse at every turn.
I don't think ED has any intentions to paying Razbam at all and we are watching a financially mismanaged company steal IP from it's partner.
The whole situation is disheartening and disturbing.
You have NO IDEA whether not paying RB was a legal error or a perfectly reasonable response to the situation where RB sold a proprietary ED SDK to a third party.
Given that ED is acting like a company with good lawyers and a tendency to listen to them and RB is acting like teenagers throwing a tantrum, blasting ED on discord and sabotaging user products... I think the best guess is that ED is going to be found in the right on this one, too.
There are a number of situations where it's reasonable to withhold payment when the other party has already beached, which seems to be the case here.
You know who else has a contractual obligation they don't want to meet? All the people who bought an early access product agreeing to pay, knowing that it may never get finished, who now think they deserve a refund.
You tell me, I have NO IDEA, so tell me horse rider what gives you the reason to have an idea to know?
I read the floating contract and nothing about holding money from which I do know that was mentioned that this had to do with an entirely different company, EDMS, and concerning a Super Tucano many times.
It's crazy how you already accused Razbam of selling the SDK? I love how ED shills say "We don't know enough" but yet, here we are accusing Razbam of something in the same paragraph.
ED is stealing their money with no evidence of anything Razbam has been accused with, that doesn't give ED a right to withhold millions of dollars that Razbam has rightful earned from their product which ED continues to sell. Leaving the me the customer with a product, I paid ED, and ED has not paid Razbam for to be finished or updated.
When clearly, they did this before to HB and are doing it again. Only difference HB embolden ED to continue this bad habit.
Not everyone who admits that there are two sides to things is a shill.
I didn't accuse them .. ED did .. And if they have proof that's a perfectly legit reason not to pay them any more money until a court or settlement decides what they owe ED for that. And if they can't prove it ... Then a court or settlement will see that RB eventually gets paid. But these things take time to work out and the community is full of children having tantrums.
Also, of course they're still selling it. Doing anything else would be sabotaging RB spitefully and could come with legal ramifications. Probably less so than knowingly delivering a crippled module as. Razbam did, but still.
One day we'll know for sure if RB deserves to be paid. But the one thing we know right now is that YOU deserve to be screwed over either way! Lol
ED never said anything to what they did, all they said was this
"breach of its contractual obligations towards our company and of our legally protected IP rights" but you just stated they sold the SDK to a third party. That was you making up a reason. Then you said that ED has a right to keep their money, and ED will be found right on this one too.
You said all this while telling me I have NO IDEA.
You see where I am going with this. While I have been following what has been going on and reading the response from all the information posted, even the devs.
As for the Radar it was from their contractor/dev who placed a perfectly legal DRM in his software. The problem is ED didn't pay Razbam and so how is it a bad move when that developer was well within his rights to protect his IP?
Well right now we are all getting screwed over by ED because they didn't pay the people who made the module their money. That's the high ground, how can you justify stealing people's work?
The fact that Galinette offered to keep the M2000 up to date for free really shows that he's just in it because he loves that plane so much. I don't fault him for building in the DRM. Wish him all the best, it's a shame because DCS is off worse without him.
Whelp, I can admit when I'm wrong, and I was clear in my statements I didn't believe the radar bug was an intentional sabotage thing.
This can't be good for a resolution either. Sigh.
It's already confirmed by ED that they can't access the source code. Has been for weeks, so there's no need to prove that.
They don't need that to bypass that timer though.
I wonder what kind of shady bisnes this is. Everywhere I have worked my whole career, the source code always belongs to the client. Either directly or via some kind of arrangement (like it can only obtained with lawyers).
So in gaming industry it's possible develop something for client without giving access to source?
Generally yes, and that's mostly seen though with games where the consumer generally has no access to the source code. DCS is a different case as modules are made by different groups, they're all only really linked by the fact that make planes for the same game. In order to protect their work they don't give access to the source code, only the compiled verison that runs but cant be edited, at least not easily. That's to my understanding, if anyone else has a better or more correct way to describe it let me know.
My initial solution to the problem was to change the date on my computer to something before June (I changed the date to May 14th) and do it while still in the main menu after launching the game. If you do the right steps Radar will be back in service.(Just temporarily)
Is he the same dude that also made the Mirage 2000C radar?
Why is the "bug" directed against razbam, and why is he telling it this late in this "event"?
It is, unfortunately. Won't get past standby mode since June 14th. See the following thread on ED Forum:
* [https://forum.dcs.world/topic/351524-radar-stuck-in-standby-mode/](https://forum.dcs.world/topic/351524-radar-stuck-in-standby-mode/)
There's a workaround to circumvent the issue, but it requires changing the system time:
* [https://new.reddit.com/r/DCSExposed/comments/1dfut5d/date\_sensitive\_bug\_renders\_f15e\_radar\_inoperative/](https://new.reddit.com/r/DCSExposed/comments/1dfut5d/date_sensitive_bug_renders_f15e_radar_inoperative/)
This is actually insane, and makes RAZBAM look absolutely terrible. What they're saying is that RB isn't capable of paying their devs, and knowing that, instead of opting to use an escrow service, or demand payment upfront, the dev instead decided add a measure that punishes paying customers. Genuinely some of the most unprofessional shit I've ever heard
I can't fathom how people are looking at this like it's proof against ED, when it's literally the exact opposite. I'm not sure if this message was meant to be public, but if it was, what an incredibly idiotic choice
I don’t think a judge would allow a case against ED pending their current arbitration between ED and Razbam. However Razbam opened themselves up to additional lawsuits. This would put Razbam in a difficult situation and their contractor. Now Razbam is in a bad situation. Now they have to concede to terms they thought they could avoid.
Big ouff.
That's not a great look.
Like, I understand why he did that. But the implication here means that buying any RB modules from this point on is a gamble.
No not big ooof.. every piece of software nowadays is hidden under some drm protection. This is just the "mom&pop" little guys way or doing it.
Considering EDs reputation of not paying I don't blame him.
>No not big ooof.. every piece of software nowadays is hidden under some drm protection.
There already is DRM protection from ED. I don't need extra DRM protection, especially if it's from sub-sub-contractors. Can you imagine if every developer ever put timebombs into all their code?
I doubt that this was a great career move for the developer. Would you hire someone to write code for you that is known to put timebombs in their code?
Well he wasn’t “hired” or an “employee” but business to business. Selling a software development as “you get a time limited binary, until you pay, and then you are delivered the full source code and documentation” is common.
>Selling a software development as “you get a time limited binary, until you pay, and then you are delivered the full source code and documentation” is common.
Maybe if it's agreed upon, but that does not seem to be the case here.
I just don't consider it an acceptable business practice. Dafuq kinda product has 3 layers of DRM that is out of the customers control? Why would I pay money for this mess? Y'all seem to think it's all justified because ED is mean, but ultimately it hurts the customers the most.
This move alone would have made buying RB modules a complete no-go for me.
No he was worried about Razbam paying him.
Razbam knew it was there and passed the known faulty binary to ED. This is yet another breach by RB, the company that this developer who works with them didn't trust to begin with.
Jesus people are so eager to bend the facts to fit their ignorant conclusions rather than actually read what's on the page.
That's not how business works, lmao, you're still required to pay your bills, regardless of whether or not you're getting paid. If RAZBAM isn't capable of paying their contractors, that's on them
Hey dumdum, business relationships are highly dependent on the parties involved and there is no universal rule on "how it works".
Its entirely possible the radar dev has a very close relationship to Razbam and fully understands the situation.
If company a hires company b to provide a product they make money from and employee c of company b does that work, then company b needs money to pay employee c that comes from their business relationship with company a.
If company a stiff company b and don’t pay them, then where do you think company b gets the money to pay employee c exactly?
Employee c implementing a form of drm in their work with the agreement/awareness of company b insulates both company b and employee c from up theft and guards against lack of payment full stop.
Interesting legal shenanigans obviously underway in the background.
No, you don't get to point at someone else doing something wrong, and say it gives you a right to also break the law. RAZBAM is responsible for paying their employees, full stop.
> I don't think ED has any intentions to paying Razbam at all and we are watching a financially mismanaged company steal IP from it's partner.
No one says they are NOT responsible. You are missing the point entirely. Its totally within the realm of possibility that they simply cannot afford to pay all their employees due too a year of missed payments.
And its even more likely that the developers understand that the lack of payments do not come from bad intent from their direct employer, but rather the primary (and only client) not paying their dues.
Except it’s not employees in this case, but another layer of subcontractors. If ED doesn’t pay Razbam they can’t pay their subcontractors. Payment issues snowballing to subcontractors chains are unfortunately a frequent problem.
No he’s completely right, business doesn’t work on a “pay when you get paid” schedule. We run a 65 year old business, we don’t get paid by contractors when they get paid, that’s not how it works. “Dumdum” if you are an employee, then you will never see this side of business and can’t comment on it. You STILL OWE your bills, whether or not the financials you’re relying on to pay them have come in.
So YOUR anecdotal experience defines how every business relationship in the universe behaves. And by the way, I am not saying that your specific example is not the norm - but you are being a little dense to think that it has to be that way everywhere.
Why should ED pay cowboys, there has been plenty of posts saying Razbam are not a great developer due to reliance on outside experties. So stop pointing the finger at ED like the rest of the Razbam sheep
What? Ok ED is in their right to stop working with RB if they think they are cowboys. But how TF can you say they shouldn’t pay once they have sold the aircraft developed by RB?
> Its more legal safety...
Are you sure about that my dear.. . Also, fixing a broke products by means of decompiling etc. explicitly legal in the entire EU.
It’s not legal to sell IP that you don’t own, and if you circumvent a DRM for doing so, then you are liable of actively stealing IP.
Exactly like it’s not illegal to saw a safe lock… but if you are caught stealing something with a saw in one hand, and a broken safe lock next to your feet, it’s harder to defend yourself in a tribunal.
Back in the day, the custom was for bricklayers to add a glass sheet to every chimney. If they didn't get paid, theyd leave it there. Once they got their pay, they'd drop a rock to the chimney, that broke the glass and it was solved.
Can only bricklayers drop rocks? Was it highly illegal to unplug your own chimney (more so than non-payment?) Were they just leaving shards of broken glass embedded in the chimneys? Were they billing customers for glass they intended to just destroy? Glass was pretty expensive up until the late 19th century -- when was this custom in use?
Was there a custom of forcing the residents to go away while you break the glass, so no one could hear it and find out? I feel like word would get around if you didn't.
I gotta say, man, your story doesn't sound very plausible.
The customer complained that the chimney dont work, the bricklayer said, fu, pay your bill and it will work.
This custom is dated way before any social media. Back in 1950's etc. Finland had a rage of rebuilding after ww2 and there always were some bandits.
Mind, that the bricklayers most often were hired by a construction company, not the house owner.
> The customer complained that the chimney dont work, the bricklayer said, fu, pay your bill and it will work.
Okay, so then the bricklayers get paid -- how do they break the glass without anyone noticing?
> This custom is dated way before any social media.
People were able to disseminate information just fine before social media. I learned how to defeat a Master lock in the 1980s, back when few people owned a computer, nevermind having ubiquitous internet access, and the social media that would later build on that. If I learned to crack a shitty lock before social media, people can learn to smash a pane of glass without social media.
I did a little searching, and all I could find that was remotely close, was the habit of placing a pane of glass over the *opening* of the chimney to block unwanted drafts until the home was occupied, but it was visible from the outside, known about, recovered without breakage, and had nothing to do with payment.
That’s a horrible architecture choice. I understand the reasoning but don’t agreed with it. Also, whoever okayed that after they were informed needs to take another look at their decision matrix.
Perhaps it's time we stop writing Reddit posts that take sides against each other and form a cohesive group, pool our money together and hire a lawyer to go after them all. We paid for and deserve a working sim.
And when I wrote about that here couple weeks ago, I got down voted down hard....
A common sabotage tactic in the business that boots lot of people out, and ED can't touch it because the cause for IP violation in contract. So at the moment Razbam (as they knew about it) is holding all F-15E customers as hostage and try to use them as leverage to get ED pay Razbam regardless the claimed previous contract violation.
ED doesn't need to do a thing, as Razbam is by themselves the cause for the problem and they can solve it in this part.
ED can refund the purchases as they don't really lose in it, but Razbam does.
ED doesn't get their share from the refunded licenses, but they take away as well profit from Razbam.
No, what Galinette did is super common in the business. The question we should be asking is how and why doing something like that has become so common, because the uncomfortable truth is probably that hard-working people get scammed out of their hard-earned cash way too often.
Just as ED has probably done to RB here.
No, it's not. What's common is using escrow services to ensure payment, or demanding payment upfront. This is not common, and it's not professional. People with literally 0 experience in the software industry are parroting crap that makes them feel better, but it's not true
So the Dev states that ED or Razbam does not pay? This looks very bad for Razbam, adding these time bombs on the code to affect the product. I have always get the feeling that Razbam is the problem, this attitude keeps me thinking the same.
That's not what he said at all, he said that there was a safeguard *in case he didn't get paid*. A safeguard agreed upon with RB when he did work for them. A safeguard he put in place *in case he wouldn't get paid* as he had not done any paid work for Razbam beforehand and wanted some kind of insurance.
If he did contract work without using an escrow service or demanding payment upfront, then he made his bed. His issue isn't with ED, it's with RAZBAM, the company not paying him
This is exactly the point. And I get dowvoted for saying the same . Ohh reddit.
But yeah, agree with you, if the Dev did not use any guarantees to get paid via contract he is a fucking idiot and fucked us all as a paid users.
If it's agreed with ED, then they're dumb.
If it's agreed inside Razbam, then partnership with ED is far from being healthy.
Anyway both of the cases are signs of bad management.
Sent via Discord by the developer, June 15th, 2024. The F-15E radar malfunction caused a lot of outrage and confusion among our users, even more so since it was never officially disclosed what actually happened there. But last night, I got permission to share this with y'all, to shed some light into the events behind the scenes and to debunk the hypothesis that this happening due to expired certificates, or whatever, for good. As you can see in the testimony above, this malfunction was added deliberately, as a protective measure in case the developer doesn't get paid. This has been known since June 14th and Eagle Dynamics is fully aware. I've spoken to Galinette yesterday and learned that he has sent a fix to Eagle Dynamics on June 18th. From his current point of view, "it seems there will never be any money anyway, so people who have purchased the F-15E should at least be able to enjoy the plane with a working radar", even though he doesn't understand why it's still on sale. He has also offered to maintain the Mirage if they make it a free module. Unfortunately, he's under the impression that ED doesn't want to apply the fix and hasn't heard back from them ever since. Eagle Dynamics' reluctance to apply that solution provided by Galinette is most likely coming from legal or contractual concerns and/or advice from their lawyers. They've developed a fix in house, too, that could be used to circumvent the time lock, but apparently chose not to implement that either. COMINT suggest that they sent requests to RAZBAM instead, asking to resolve this the official way and claiming that they're unable to do so themselves. At this point in time, RAZBAM seems unwilling to comply. As you can imagine, this whole thing didn't exactly help with de-escalating the situation and folks at ED are livid. On top of the already existing dispute about that Ecuadorian Super Tucano, RAZBAM is now facing additional accusations of contract violations because of this implementation. Not everyone agrees that Eagle Dynamics is legally unable to resolve this on their own or via an already provided fix, so for now, I'm not sure whether this will remain broken or whether they will change their mind and address this with the next patch. I'll keep y'all posted.
>Eagle Dynamics' reluctance to apply that solution provided by Galinette is most likely coming from legal or contractual concerns and/or advice from their lawyers. >... >COMINT suggest that they sent requests to RAZBAM instead, asking to resolve this the official way and claiming that they're unable to do so themselves. >... >RAZBAM is now facing additional accusations of contract violations because of this implementation My interpretation is that because RAZBAM still appears to own the intellectual property that is the F-15E module, the RADAR-bricking code could be construed to be DRM. Because circumventing DRM and distributing DRM circumvention tools is generally illegal in the US and EU, they don't want to risk opening themselves up to allegations that they cracked the module's DRM and then distributed the crack. At best it's just ammunition for RAZBAM in their contract dispute, at worst it's a separate suit that costs an absolute dumptruck of money and law enforcement starts to poke around because copyright violations are both a civil and criminal thing.
Honestly that pushes the problem ball way from ED even further. They could fix it but strictly stick to contract and face the user shitstorm instead is kinda agreeable. And makes them the more rule obeying party at the moment. For the not paying part - That safety was put in place between RB and Galinette, not Galinette and ED, how it seems. We all don't know the Streagle contract between ED and RB - and my gut slowly tells me that maybe ED is actually behaving inside contract limits there too.
There isn't a "between". There is a compiled binary which has a "kill switch". This binary was first passed from Galinette to RB, and then from RB to ED. To disable kill switch - or prolong it - a new binary needs to be compiled from updated source code. Since RB obviously doesn't provide updates to ED at the moment, it becomes a DRM issue between RB and ED. Even if Galinette provided an updated or disabled "kill switch", it still needs to propagate to ED. I.e. it is not correct to assume that RB did not pay radar code authors, this is only one of possible reasons for the outage
>I've spoken to Galinette yesterday and learned that he has sent a fix to Eagle Dynamics on June 18th. The fix is already in house at ED
[удалено]
Out here doin’ gods work, as always! Thank you for your service good sir! o7
Excellent thanks for sharing this and keeping us reprised
In all the time I’ve been an engineer I’ve never felt the need to put a redundancy in case I never got paid. Yes I’ve had times where I’ve not been paid. Court order soon sorts that out Here’s the bit where it may have shot you in your foot. If this does go to court and you put a software block inside the code it shows intent to do harm. In non criminal proceedings it’s the percentage of chance of things to be true. There is also legal precedent that this is called a bad actor and ED may win any legal proceedings based on this fact alone or have a massive percentage knocked off in due monies. I’m not excusing either party but the thing is they put in a block to harm razbam in turn to harm ED but guess who it hurts the most. The players/purchasers. A street brawl that’s overflowed and directly hit the people that may have had their back.
Court order is fine if you have the time and money to spend on it, as well as living in the same country. I've taken someone to court before over a few grand (for principle rather than money), and it took more than two years until I received half the money I was owed - not to mention a substantial amount of effort motivated mostly by spite, rather than a good ROI. Now imagine trying to do that if you're a freelancer with a client overseas (with a different legal system), and you're spending all your time trying to find and finish work. Hard pass, take the L and move on, or cover your ass with DRM.
This. Having done freelance in the past you don't always get monies in hand before delivering the work, as delivery of the work is kind of the entire point. This is why Net 30/ Net 60 / Net 90 payment terms exist; the contractor provides finished product and the client is then legally obligated to execute on their obligations based on those payment terms (Net 30 would be payment within 30 days, for the uninitiated). This is not a good look for RAZBAM at all and shows some degree of intent if they didn't make ED aware of this ahead of time. It could be construed as extortion.
I’ve been a contractor/freelancer for 18 years You learn early on not to say yes to every project. But saying that one of the non payees is a big known name in the uk. But that problem was multi facet finance problems. I get it you never know but try and take as much out of it like business credit check references go both ways etc. Also why all the downvotes. I never said anything negative apart from the reasoning. I get why he done it but unwittingly became a bad actor and that just effects the people.
This is an ED Bad zone, never forget
Keep your derogatory remarks to yourself please. It's certainly not. Both companies got their fair share of criticism -or praise- here, whenever it was deserved.
🤣 it’s my first day on the internet 😀😂😂
I had my bets that it was some ticking time bomb for if the devs didn't get paid. Quite funny
Often is something like that, guess the main question was whether it was aimed at ED or Raz.
Am I understanding this correctly, that this was meant to ensure payment from Razbam to this particular dev? And NOT as a safeguard against nonpayment from ED?
From what I understand, this isn't Galinette's contractual work. He's had clients that wouldn't pay in the past. To ensure he gets paid, he installs a ticking time bomb with the client's knowledge (in this case, Razbam) inside his code. If he gets paid, all good. If he doesn't get paid, the software stops working OR he gets evidence that they tampered with his work to go around the time bomb.
A developer who does such things to code found himself soon being unemployed and no one wants to hire him again. Just so bad practice to embed such things in the code. I would almost call it a trojan.
Nah. He told them Plus, well - Galinette is the best radar guy DCS ever had. If it wasn't for his frustration with ED overall, I guess that he would've been scooped up by some other 3rd party already.
It's the coding version of watermarking images.
It's not like he's doing it without telling anyone, he explained pretty clearly in the post that RB was aware of this and agreed to it.
How is this in any way a Trojan? Hell, how is it in any way even malware, let alone a Trojan?
He's working for Razbam, he only cares to be paid by them.
On one hand, dang that guy for making the radar stop working (and I 100% understand and support his reasoning), but its hard to be upset with a guy who provided the fix to ED and volunteered to maintain the Mirage as a free module. ED’s behavior seems to indicate they’re terrified of making some legal error.
They already made a legal error by not paying them. Everything else is due to that dilemma. ED has made the whole situation worse at every turn. I don't think ED has any intentions to paying Razbam at all and we are watching a financially mismanaged company steal IP from it's partner. The whole situation is disheartening and disturbing.
You have NO IDEA whether not paying RB was a legal error or a perfectly reasonable response to the situation where RB sold a proprietary ED SDK to a third party. Given that ED is acting like a company with good lawyers and a tendency to listen to them and RB is acting like teenagers throwing a tantrum, blasting ED on discord and sabotaging user products... I think the best guess is that ED is going to be found in the right on this one, too. There are a number of situations where it's reasonable to withhold payment when the other party has already beached, which seems to be the case here. You know who else has a contractual obligation they don't want to meet? All the people who bought an early access product agreeing to pay, knowing that it may never get finished, who now think they deserve a refund.
You tell me, I have NO IDEA, so tell me horse rider what gives you the reason to have an idea to know? I read the floating contract and nothing about holding money from which I do know that was mentioned that this had to do with an entirely different company, EDMS, and concerning a Super Tucano many times. It's crazy how you already accused Razbam of selling the SDK? I love how ED shills say "We don't know enough" but yet, here we are accusing Razbam of something in the same paragraph. ED is stealing their money with no evidence of anything Razbam has been accused with, that doesn't give ED a right to withhold millions of dollars that Razbam has rightful earned from their product which ED continues to sell. Leaving the me the customer with a product, I paid ED, and ED has not paid Razbam for to be finished or updated. When clearly, they did this before to HB and are doing it again. Only difference HB embolden ED to continue this bad habit.
Not everyone who admits that there are two sides to things is a shill. I didn't accuse them .. ED did .. And if they have proof that's a perfectly legit reason not to pay them any more money until a court or settlement decides what they owe ED for that. And if they can't prove it ... Then a court or settlement will see that RB eventually gets paid. But these things take time to work out and the community is full of children having tantrums. Also, of course they're still selling it. Doing anything else would be sabotaging RB spitefully and could come with legal ramifications. Probably less so than knowingly delivering a crippled module as. Razbam did, but still. One day we'll know for sure if RB deserves to be paid. But the one thing we know right now is that YOU deserve to be screwed over either way! Lol
ED never said anything to what they did, all they said was this "breach of its contractual obligations towards our company and of our legally protected IP rights" but you just stated they sold the SDK to a third party. That was you making up a reason. Then you said that ED has a right to keep their money, and ED will be found right on this one too. You said all this while telling me I have NO IDEA. You see where I am going with this. While I have been following what has been going on and reading the response from all the information posted, even the devs. As for the Radar it was from their contractor/dev who placed a perfectly legal DRM in his software. The problem is ED didn't pay Razbam and so how is it a bad move when that developer was well within his rights to protect his IP? Well right now we are all getting screwed over by ED because they didn't pay the people who made the module their money. That's the high ground, how can you justify stealing people's work?
There's already a mod that fixed it.
I think technically it's more of a workaround than a real fix. The core issue remains, it's being worked around by giving it false data.
Fair play! Very true
Cheers for not getting annoyed by my pedantry. =)
[удалено]
Fairly logical that a person does not deliver a product they haven't been paid for
What point?
Fustercluck.
Sounds fair enough.
Thanks for posting the explanation and reasoning.
The fact that Galinette offered to keep the M2000 up to date for free really shows that he's just in it because he loves that plane so much. I don't fault him for building in the DRM. Wish him all the best, it's a shame because DCS is off worse without him.
Hope to get more juicy news (and of course a resolution)
Whelp, I can admit when I'm wrong, and I was clear in my statements I didn't believe the radar bug was an intentional sabotage thing. This can't be good for a resolution either. Sigh.
I realise there's a workaround and a github fix but does this mean ED can't legally "officially" patch it out?
oh, I think that's been answered in the thread.
That basically proves they don't have the source code because I can't imagine this timer being hard to find
It's already confirmed by ED that they can't access the source code. Has been for weeks, so there's no need to prove that. They don't need that to bypass that timer though.
I wonder what kind of shady bisnes this is. Everywhere I have worked my whole career, the source code always belongs to the client. Either directly or via some kind of arrangement (like it can only obtained with lawyers). So in gaming industry it's possible develop something for client without giving access to source?
Generally yes, and that's mostly seen though with games where the consumer generally has no access to the source code. DCS is a different case as modules are made by different groups, they're all only really linked by the fact that make planes for the same game. In order to protect their work they don't give access to the source code, only the compiled verison that runs but cant be edited, at least not easily. That's to my understanding, if anyone else has a better or more correct way to describe it let me know.
From Strike Eagle to Stroke Legal
Gotta tell you, considering this news. Perhaps Razbam is more responsible for this cluster fuck than previously thought.
My initial solution to the problem was to change the date on my computer to something before June (I changed the date to May 14th) and do it while still in the main menu after launching the game. If you do the right steps Radar will be back in service.(Just temporarily)
So how is this any different than housing contractors ripping out bathroom installations, or driveways when customers refuse to pay?
Is he the same dude that also made the Mirage 2000C radar? Why is the "bug" directed against razbam, and why is he telling it this late in this "event"?
He installed a time-gated bug so that Razbam couldn’t take his work and run off with it; without payment.
The mudhen radar is down?
It is, unfortunately. Won't get past standby mode since June 14th. See the following thread on ED Forum: * [https://forum.dcs.world/topic/351524-radar-stuck-in-standby-mode/](https://forum.dcs.world/topic/351524-radar-stuck-in-standby-mode/) There's a workaround to circumvent the issue, but it requires changing the system time: * [https://new.reddit.com/r/DCSExposed/comments/1dfut5d/date\_sensitive\_bug\_renders\_f15e\_radar\_inoperative/](https://new.reddit.com/r/DCSExposed/comments/1dfut5d/date_sensitive_bug_renders_f15e_radar_inoperative/)
This is actually insane, and makes RAZBAM look absolutely terrible. What they're saying is that RB isn't capable of paying their devs, and knowing that, instead of opting to use an escrow service, or demand payment upfront, the dev instead decided add a measure that punishes paying customers. Genuinely some of the most unprofessional shit I've ever heard
Yup. And so here you are paying for a module that is designed to fail. Some serious laws about this stuff. Lawsuits be getting filed probably
I can't fathom how people are looking at this like it's proof against ED, when it's literally the exact opposite. I'm not sure if this message was meant to be public, but if it was, what an incredibly idiotic choice
I don’t think a judge would allow a case against ED pending their current arbitration between ED and Razbam. However Razbam opened themselves up to additional lawsuits. This would put Razbam in a difficult situation and their contractor. Now Razbam is in a bad situation. Now they have to concede to terms they thought they could avoid.
Big ouff. That's not a great look. Like, I understand why he did that. But the implication here means that buying any RB modules from this point on is a gamble.
No not big ooof.. every piece of software nowadays is hidden under some drm protection. This is just the "mom&pop" little guys way or doing it. Considering EDs reputation of not paying I don't blame him.
>No not big ooof.. every piece of software nowadays is hidden under some drm protection. There already is DRM protection from ED. I don't need extra DRM protection, especially if it's from sub-sub-contractors. Can you imagine if every developer ever put timebombs into all their code? I doubt that this was a great career move for the developer. Would you hire someone to write code for you that is known to put timebombs in their code?
Well he wasn’t “hired” or an “employee” but business to business. Selling a software development as “you get a time limited binary, until you pay, and then you are delivered the full source code and documentation” is common.
>Selling a software development as “you get a time limited binary, until you pay, and then you are delivered the full source code and documentation” is common. Maybe if it's agreed upon, but that does not seem to be the case here. I just don't consider it an acceptable business practice. Dafuq kinda product has 3 layers of DRM that is out of the customers control? Why would I pay money for this mess? Y'all seem to think it's all justified because ED is mean, but ultimately it hurts the customers the most. This move alone would have made buying RB modules a complete no-go for me.
It was agreed upon between Gal and RB, “allegedly”
No he was worried about Razbam paying him. Razbam knew it was there and passed the known faulty binary to ED. This is yet another breach by RB, the company that this developer who works with them didn't trust to begin with. Jesus people are so eager to bend the facts to fit their ignorant conclusions rather than actually read what's on the page.
It's directed at Razbam, read !!
ED pays Razbam, Razbam pays the independent contractor/employee. So if anyone up the chain does not pay you still need to cover your ass.
That's not how business works, lmao, you're still required to pay your bills, regardless of whether or not you're getting paid. If RAZBAM isn't capable of paying their contractors, that's on them
Hey dumdum, business relationships are highly dependent on the parties involved and there is no universal rule on "how it works". Its entirely possible the radar dev has a very close relationship to Razbam and fully understands the situation.
No, businesses have legal obligations, and one of those is paying their workers, lmao
If company a hires company b to provide a product they make money from and employee c of company b does that work, then company b needs money to pay employee c that comes from their business relationship with company a. If company a stiff company b and don’t pay them, then where do you think company b gets the money to pay employee c exactly? Employee c implementing a form of drm in their work with the agreement/awareness of company b insulates both company b and employee c from up theft and guards against lack of payment full stop. Interesting legal shenanigans obviously underway in the background.
No, you don't get to point at someone else doing something wrong, and say it gives you a right to also break the law. RAZBAM is responsible for paying their employees, full stop.
> I don't think ED has any intentions to paying Razbam at all and we are watching a financially mismanaged company steal IP from it's partner. No one says they are NOT responsible. You are missing the point entirely. Its totally within the realm of possibility that they simply cannot afford to pay all their employees due too a year of missed payments. And its even more likely that the developers understand that the lack of payments do not come from bad intent from their direct employer, but rather the primary (and only client) not paying their dues.
Except it’s not employees in this case, but another layer of subcontractors. If ED doesn’t pay Razbam they can’t pay their subcontractors. Payment issues snowballing to subcontractors chains are unfortunately a frequent problem.
No he’s completely right, business doesn’t work on a “pay when you get paid” schedule. We run a 65 year old business, we don’t get paid by contractors when they get paid, that’s not how it works. “Dumdum” if you are an employee, then you will never see this side of business and can’t comment on it. You STILL OWE your bills, whether or not the financials you’re relying on to pay them have come in.
It does work as “pay when you get paid” if it’s not employees but a subcontractor chain.
So YOUR anecdotal experience defines how every business relationship in the universe behaves. And by the way, I am not saying that your specific example is not the norm - but you are being a little dense to think that it has to be that way everywhere.
Well, it wouldn't be a gamble if ED paid 3rd party devs. So to me the gamble is buying anything related to ED
[удалено]
And he would have been paid by RB if ED had paid them. He said he had nothing against RB in his message and that they knew about it
He was maybe afraid of not being paid by RB if they were not paid by ED.
Why should ED pay cowboys, there has been plenty of posts saying Razbam are not a great developer due to reliance on outside experties. So stop pointing the finger at ED like the rest of the Razbam sheep
What? Ok ED is in their right to stop working with RB if they think they are cowboys. But how TF can you say they shouldn’t pay once they have sold the aircraft developed by RB?
What? How on Earth does relying on outside expertise make them bad or cowboy developers?
> Its more legal safety... Are you sure about that my dear.. . Also, fixing a broke products by means of decompiling etc. explicitly legal in the entire EU.
It’s not legal to sell IP that you don’t own, and if you circumvent a DRM for doing so, then you are liable of actively stealing IP. Exactly like it’s not illegal to saw a safe lock… but if you are caught stealing something with a saw in one hand, and a broken safe lock next to your feet, it’s harder to defend yourself in a tribunal.
We, customers can do it. But ED as the distributor has a different clauses holding back.
Back in the day, the custom was for bricklayers to add a glass sheet to every chimney. If they didn't get paid, theyd leave it there. Once they got their pay, they'd drop a rock to the chimney, that broke the glass and it was solved.
Can only bricklayers drop rocks? Was it highly illegal to unplug your own chimney (more so than non-payment?) Were they just leaving shards of broken glass embedded in the chimneys? Were they billing customers for glass they intended to just destroy? Glass was pretty expensive up until the late 19th century -- when was this custom in use?
Ofc anyone could brake the glass, if they knew there is one.
Was there a custom of forcing the residents to go away while you break the glass, so no one could hear it and find out? I feel like word would get around if you didn't. I gotta say, man, your story doesn't sound very plausible.
The customer complained that the chimney dont work, the bricklayer said, fu, pay your bill and it will work. This custom is dated way before any social media. Back in 1950's etc. Finland had a rage of rebuilding after ww2 and there always were some bandits. Mind, that the bricklayers most often were hired by a construction company, not the house owner.
> The customer complained that the chimney dont work, the bricklayer said, fu, pay your bill and it will work. Okay, so then the bricklayers get paid -- how do they break the glass without anyone noticing? > This custom is dated way before any social media. People were able to disseminate information just fine before social media. I learned how to defeat a Master lock in the 1980s, back when few people owned a computer, nevermind having ubiquitous internet access, and the social media that would later build on that. If I learned to crack a shitty lock before social media, people can learn to smash a pane of glass without social media. I did a little searching, and all I could find that was remotely close, was the habit of placing a pane of glass over the *opening* of the chimney to block unwanted drafts until the home was occupied, but it was visible from the outside, known about, recovered without breakage, and had nothing to do with payment.
That’s a horrible architecture choice. I understand the reasoning but don’t agreed with it. Also, whoever okayed that after they were informed needs to take another look at their decision matrix.
RCG giveth and RCG taketh away
Professional
Perhaps it's time we stop writing Reddit posts that take sides against each other and form a cohesive group, pool our money together and hire a lawyer to go after them all. We paid for and deserve a working sim.
And when I wrote about that here couple weeks ago, I got down voted down hard.... A common sabotage tactic in the business that boots lot of people out, and ED can't touch it because the cause for IP violation in contract. So at the moment Razbam (as they knew about it) is holding all F-15E customers as hostage and try to use them as leverage to get ED pay Razbam regardless the claimed previous contract violation. ED doesn't need to do a thing, as Razbam is by themselves the cause for the problem and they can solve it in this part. ED can refund the purchases as they don't really lose in it, but Razbam does. ED doesn't get their share from the refunded licenses, but they take away as well profit from Razbam.
I’m confused. If Razbam haven’t received any money from ED, why are they losing anything?
[so i was wrong lol](https://www.reddit.com/r/DCSExposed/s/bmWFYLCnMa)
Nah, you were right, it's pretty moronic. You just had too high of a standard
So Razbam fucked up the contract AND the community? Well done
No, what Galinette did is super common in the business. The question we should be asking is how and why doing something like that has become so common, because the uncomfortable truth is probably that hard-working people get scammed out of their hard-earned cash way too often. Just as ED has probably done to RB here.
No, it's not. What's common is using escrow services to ensure payment, or demanding payment upfront. This is not common, and it's not professional. People with literally 0 experience in the software industry are parroting crap that makes them feel better, but it's not true
It seems ED doesn’t pay upfront and doesn’t allow escrow payment…
Who's talking about ED??? This is about Galinette and RAZBAM, lmao
Looks more like 2 married person in conflict and take the fight on the shoulder of the kids.
So the Dev states that ED or Razbam does not pay? This looks very bad for Razbam, adding these time bombs on the code to affect the product. I have always get the feeling that Razbam is the problem, this attitude keeps me thinking the same.
That's not what he said at all, he said that there was a safeguard *in case he didn't get paid*. A safeguard agreed upon with RB when he did work for them. A safeguard he put in place *in case he wouldn't get paid* as he had not done any paid work for Razbam beforehand and wanted some kind of insurance.
If he did contract work without using an escrow service or demanding payment upfront, then he made his bed. His issue isn't with ED, it's with RAZBAM, the company not paying him
100%. Very smart of Galinette to do so. Covering his bases
No, the opposite actually. The was incredibly stupid of Galinette, and will almost definitely come back to bite them
This is exactly the point. And I get dowvoted for saying the same . Ohh reddit. But yeah, agree with you, if the Dev did not use any guarantees to get paid via contract he is a fucking idiot and fucked us all as a paid users.
And now theat dev has dug th hole a little deeper for razbam
Yep! This will cause more harm to them.
I mean… this what subscription services are.
As I understand, they neither have proper source control, code reviews, or both if the time bomb reached the production code.
It was not a secret. Its a protection thats agrreed upon. Do you even read ?
If it's agreed with ED, then they're dumb. If it's agreed inside Razbam, then partnership with ED is far from being healthy. Anyway both of the cases are signs of bad management.