Microsoft Bans MScenery From In-Sim Marketplace (Finally!)
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Community manager acknowledges “community feedback” on the issue of MScenery’s slop content
Last week, Microsoft took the unprecedented step of removing a vendor from its in-sim Marketplace after facing a wave of criticism and complaints from the community over the previous weeks.
MScenery, a developer (if we can even call them that) of third party aircraft for the simulator, has now had all of their products removed from the in-sim marketplace. In a statement posted to the MSFS forums by SeedyL, the game’s community manager, the move was justified on the basis that a significant number of complaints had been received regarding the quality of MScenery’s products, the lack of accurate product descriptions (if there was any at all), and the use of fake reviews to heighten the product’s apparent legitimacy.
The move is significant in that Microsoft has never before taken such decisive action in relation to low quality content from a specific vendor. Individual products have previously been removed from the marketplace for issues like copyright disputes, however no action on this scale has been taken until today.
Users who already owned MScenery products will still be able to access them through their sim’s content manager, but if you were hoping to get your hands on an MScenery product prior to this decision, you’re out of luck. Although the good news for such users is that there are many more vastly superior addons still available.
Slop Content
The Microsoft Flight Simulator in-sim marketplace has been criticised for as long as it has existed by users across the community for the seeming abundance of unchecked, low quality content on offer. Long time readers of FSElite will already be familiar with household names such as Captain Sim and BREDOK3D, for instance. MScenery was very much in that same category.
At the time of being pulled from the marketplace, MScenery had, according to the unofficial MSFS marketplace online browser, listed a truly staggering 1460 addons, typically retailing for between $10 and $20 USD.
Criticism had been circulating for a long time prior to this announcement on official and third party forums. The earliest of these that I could find was made by MSFS Forum user BostonJeremy77 way back in March 2021.
After purchasing the MScenery FA-18C Hornet, Jeremy wrote a short review describing the product as “s**t sandwich”, lamenting the notable absense of any interactive cockpit functionality (despite this being part of the product description). No clickable buttons, switches, control surfaces. Not even the screens or avionics apparently worked. Jeremy later went on to discover that the 3D model MScenery had used for their FA-18C product appeared to be the intellectual property of Dino Catteneo, the founder of IndiaFoxtrotEcho. Commenting, Jeremy wrote:
Just wanted to report that MScenery’s F-18 published on SimMarket today uses Dino Cattaneo’s MB-339 as a template. The author even forgot to remove MB-339 loading screen descriptions of MB-339 on this aircraft. False advertisement of animated exterior and cockpit also abound. Gears don’t retract, flaps don’t retract, NOTHING in the cockpit is remotely functional.
Recent Critique
Here on the website, too, is a collection of videos on this topic MSFS Developer Blacklist
Fast forward 5 years and last week a fantastic video critique published by AvAngel also loudly made the case against MScenery. In her video, AvAngel draws attention to the blatant review botting of the products, as well as the lack of any product description on most of the marketplace listings. This on top of the fact that many of the product images appeared to be AI-generated, or at least AI-enhanced.
In one example looking at the MScenery A340-600: Enhanced Edition, for instance, the product images feature unrealistic looking massive cumulonimbus clouds to make the aircraft appear more dramatic. The AI tools had no-doubt also been used to sharpen the aircraft’s texture resolution in preview images, as upon taking one for the team and actually purchasing one of these products for further examination, AvAngel showed the texture resolution was severely lacking – nowhere near the advertised 8K resolution.
While previewing the MScenery A350 in her video, we can clearly see that the aircraft was using stock A320 avionics from the original Asobo A320NEO (not the newer iniBuilds “V2” that was licensed for FS24), and the EFB displays only presented the user with the MSFS stock VFR map. Not especially useful for a transatlantic crossing.
Though a transatlantic crossing wouldn’t have been possible anyway because AvAngel found that the aircraft’s flight computer was seemingly completely inop, making it impossible to input any sort of flight plan.
The Way Forward?
Naturally the decision taken by Microsoft has got the community thinking about what comes next. Comments are locked on the original forum post, but conversation around the move has spread to other platforms. Many users seem to be delighted by the decision, while others are concerned that MScenery may come back, trading under a new name and continue with their highly dubious practises.
AvAngel also touches on the problem in her video. On the one hand, it would be wrong to gatekeep entry to the marketplace on the basis of an addon’s quality, because there will be many people developing addons as a hobby who will never be able to match the level of detail some of the larger development studios can pull off. On the other hand, however, AvAngel makes the (in my view, entirely reasonable) argument that any addon being sold through the marketplace should be properly advertised. That should include, in the case of an aircraft, un-edited images of the exterior and cockpit at a minimum.
What do you think about the move and what happens next? How could Microsoft potentially curate the marketplace without imposing too high of a bar for entry? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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