wow...sad news here...Nemeth Design out of business

**skyhawka4m** · June 22nd, 2011, 01:34

Topic: Nemeth designs ceasing operation due to piracy

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aussiecop
(HC354AU)

Group: Student Pilot
Posts: 706
Joined: Dec. 2007

Posted: June 21 2011,20:50

It is with great sadness that I need to let the community know that we will be ceasing further development on products until we develop a proper anti piracy measure to beat the rampant piracy of our products.

Less than a week after the release of the A109 it has started appearing on torrent sites and our sales have gone to virtually nothing the very next day. We had some download issues where we had to make other arrangements to make sure customers were still getting their downloads, one of these customers decided to obviously share this and it was downloaded over 400 times in 24 hours, just goes to show how much this hurts us as we have sold under that in total sales since release.

I am writing this post very frustrated at the people that think what we do is something they want, but don't feel they need to pay for the 6-8 months of work we put in to produce it. The thing some people are not aware of is that 2 out of the 3 developers at ND rely solely on income derived from the making of these helicopters. This is not my full time job, but it is to the other 2 developers and without income there is no money to keep expenses like websites and internet connectivity going and that means in the end, no more ND.

Although this is not accusing anyone here at hovercontrol, I am aware that there are people who pirate our products that come here to converse with other helicopter flight sim enthusiasts.

To those of you who think that is perfectly fine behaviour, understand that without people buying products from us, there is no more products, so that next helicopter you wanted in FSX may not come due to the people who think it is ok to just download and not pay for it.

This community as a whole is great and I have enjoyed speaking with everyone in this role, it is just unfortunate that the few who think it's perfectly ok to behave like this may prevent us from bringing new models to the FS community unless we can find a foolproof system that ensures that we can still receive income from our work.

Edited by aussiecop on June 21 2011,20:52 

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**skyhawka4m** · June 22nd, 2011, 01:35

Is the A109 still for sale anywhere.....I now feel compelled to support them.

**jeansy** · June 22nd, 2011, 02:11

not really out of bissiness

more like a dummy spit to reality of life, they will be back, its just like the orbx dummy spit some time back

its just the same topic that any developer faces, to be honest it wont change a thing

**michael davies** · June 22nd, 2011, 02:58

Sadly, there is no place for the small developer any more, or its getting very close to that situation, you either ignore the piracy or you fold, or you can join hands with one of the big players like Just Flight or Flight 1 who take all the piracy crap off you, you do end up with a smaller profit but thats about the only way forward. Only the big players can afford half decent anti piracy software these days.

They are not the first to close shop, they won't be the last, but more worryingly I haven't seen any 'new' sustainable commercial developers arrive on the scene in recent years, ergo, the numbers are getting smaller and smaller, I now consider myself (ex small time commercial developer) as part of a nearly extinct race.

I'm sure there is in some part a little dummy spitting (fueled by frustration more than anything I suspect), but its easy to dismiss such tantrums from outside, and to be utterly blunt, even if it were a major dummy spitting exercise, the end result is still the same, they will still close, it doesn't matter how they got there, what they said or their actions during the process, the end result is still undeniably the same, no more models end of. Matt is right, it won't change a thing, those carrying out such actions really don't give a damn and its no great loss to them if any developer folds, they will just steal from another or in the worse case scenario, go play something else, chances are most are not what I can pure aviation sim enthusiasts anyway, spongers with a thin grasp of what we're (the real community) really all about, an idle interest in the sim and its community and onward to the next hot thing.

Sad to see them go, but hardly a shock...to me anyway.

**Roadburner440** · June 22nd, 2011, 03:10

This is the exact debate we have been having about the T-38A now at Milviz.. Mr. Davies pretty much hit the nail on the head. It surely seems you either join hands, or go home. It is certaintly sad to see the A-109 being pirated as such after all of the work that has gone in to it. It certaintly hit me pretty hard last night when Colin told me what had happened, and pointed me to that message over on hovercontrol.. We will just have to wait and see what the direction forward is.

**Cag40Navy** · June 22nd, 2011, 03:14

Such a shame. I do hope they find something.

***wombat666*** · June 22nd, 2011, 03:19

Cyber Crime is now the greatest problem facing Law Enforcement world wide.
Software theft is part of this but as one spokesperson put it "Law Enforcement 1 - Criminals 10".
Michael has it right, small developers must join with distributors like Flight 1 and Just Flight, just as Aeroplane Heaven have.
A fact of life when it comes to doing business on the Internet.
Stuff happens.

***noddy*** · June 22nd, 2011, 03:25

A great shame to hear, but it is unfortunatley it is the sign of the times I guess.

Hopefully something can been done, as we cannot keep losing developers.

**Cag40Navy** · June 22nd, 2011, 03:33

Originally Posted by skyhawka4m

Is the A109 still for sale anywhere.....I now feel compelled to support them.

Heres the link: http://www.nemethdesigns.com/2-payware

**Deano** · June 22nd, 2011, 03:51

You have gotta be joking !

Dummy spitting ? I've never heard anything so insulting in all my life.

How would you react to such a situation when some developers rely heavily on product sales which relates to paying there mortgage / rent and trying to look after there family.

Would you walk up to a developer and say to his face stop spitting your dummy out, get over it ! you'll only have to miss paying next months mortgage / rent / school fees.

Next time you have a PC problem or someone rams into your car and your explaining this to a friend and your totally devastated about the occurrence, what would your reactions be to someone saying, oh stop spitting your dummy out.

What on earth is happening to this world.

**jeansy** · June 22nd, 2011, 04:12

Originally Posted by Deano

You have gotta be joking !

Dummy spitting ? I've never heard anything so insulting in all my life.

How would you react to such a situation when some developers rely heavily on product sales which relates to paying there mortgage / rent and trying to look after there family.

Would you walk up to a developer and say to his face stop spitting your dummy out, get over it ! you'll only have to miss paying next months mortgage / rent / school fees.

Next time you have a PC problem or someone rams into your car and your explaining this to a friend, what would your reactions be to someone saying, oh stop spitting your dummy out.

What on earth is happening to this world.

insulting?
Maybe

blunt?
Yes

fact of life?
Yes

Will the guy who posted the torrent remove it after reading or hearing about it ?
No

Will people stop downloading it?
No

will it change a thing?
No
as mick said whos been in this game for a while " it won't change a thing, those carrying out such actions really don't give a damn and its no great loss to them if any developer folds, they will just steal from another or in the worse case scenario, go play something else, chances are most are not what I can pure aviation sim enthusiasts anyway, spongers with a thin grasp of what we're (the real community) really all about, an idle interest in the sim and its community and onward to the next hot thing"

1 thing i will give them credit for, theyre not as dumb as another developer who during their dummy spit posted the link to the torrent and left it there for a few days

Thats has to be the single-est dumbest thing ive seen when it came to protesting about piracy

**FSN** · June 22nd, 2011, 04:17

Having all the small devs go with a flight one wrapper like Aeroplane Heaven doesn't help. Hell when they released the Just Flight DC3 is contained some of my own work from my DC3 sound pack. This was before I redid the sound for them.

There are solutions out there but they come with a big price tag and are on the most part inconvenient for the customer. Luckily I'm not popular enough to lose out on the torrents.

**Deano** · June 22nd, 2011, 04:24

not only do you see fit to being insulting to the developer, they're now dumb as well, lol I give up.

I rest my case. :salute:

**krazycolin** · June 22nd, 2011, 04:30

Even F1 gets hacked. We did the 310 with them and though it took two months, it still ended up on the torrents...

As the main partner for the Nemeth's it is a sad time for sure. We shall see what we shall see though.

One of the ways we are looking ourselves at this is to have each sale identified (good luck finding the identifier...) and or to use F1 and or to follow Lotus' method. Closed forums. You don't buy the product? You get no help.

I really hate that we may have to have some kind of method that may impinge upon the end user who actually paid for the product but...

One of the things that Michael says about spongers who wouldn't buy it is incorrect. Sales of the 109 fell off drastically two days after it went into the wild. This says to me that people who were planning on buying it, saw it in the wild and went for it.

Not cool true... and maybe it is spitting...

Anyway... The Talon will be released soon and we hope that you all will not put it up on the torrents quite so soon. I do not wish to go out of business.

**jeansy** · June 22nd, 2011, 04:34

Originally Posted by Deano

not only do you see fit to being insulting to the developer, they're now dumb as well, lol I give up.

I rest my case. :salute:

your case is heard dean, but cooler heads prevail

im sure this topic will re surface in a few months if not weeks with another developer and the same points will be raised

**michael davies** · June 22nd, 2011, 05:28

Originally Posted by krazycolin

One of the things that Michael says about spongers who wouldn't buy it is incorrect. Sales of the 109 fell off drastically two days after it went into the wild. This says to me that people who were planning on buying it, saw it in the wild and went for it.

Possibly your correct, I can only go from personal experience, thought its a little out of date now (18-24 months) and I suspect the torrent malarkey is much more prevalent now than back then.

There is also another factor that many still refuse to acknowledge, diminishing customers. There only so many customers in this market, their pockets are only so deep, if developers continue to saturate the market or hike prices up then that customer base is going to continue to shrink, and whether you want to stick your head in the sand, torrents are going to rise. Its simple supply and demand, you either have lots of products at low costs or less products at a higher cost, the market will not sustain lots of high cost products. Sadly this profession still sees back biting, under cutting, product duplication and rush to shelf to beat competitors either through spite to cut the opponents profits or to gain the lead in initial sales. Developers are often running scared they will be usurped in the closing months/weeks and rush to complete, just to get it out there, then worry about patches and the mess afterward, just MHO.

Customers are not stupid, they're more internet savy now, they know, we know, every one knows, that eventually it'll appear as a torrent, hiking prices up is simply giving them more of an excuse to hold back. There will always be those that torrent, always have, always will and you will never stop that hard core, but now the torrent market is impinging on more honest people, people prepared to take the risk, prepared to wait and not be the first in the queue and the 109 looks like living proof that this is now becoming a growing trend. Hard core torrent abuses have not risen, its honest middle ground folk that are being driven there by many factors, some of which the business can control or have an effect on.

Best

Michael

**hae5904** · June 22nd, 2011, 05:43

Well said Michael!!
Not that I encourage piracy, on the contrary, I will always support a product by buying it. But as you said, the first a customer will notice is product duplication, whether aircraft or scenery, weather proggies etc.
Personally to me that kills most product buys. (But budget constraints do that to...

)

Cheers

**michael davies** · June 22nd, 2011, 06:01

I must also add that Helicopters are a very small market to begin with, once you have banged out the popular models theres very little else to scratch your pickings from, even worse if it's a civil variant. Its a niche within a niche market, very difficult if thats your only customer base and double difficult if you get hit with a torrent soon after release.

Their limited portfolio is not helping their case, in this day and age to survive you need to diversify, even Alphasim, long term providers of military aircraft had to diversify into the civil arena, likewise some civil only developers have branched into military markets, again adding to the possibilities of duplication.

Best

Michael

**Deano** · June 22nd, 2011, 06:04

The products don't surface on torrents from thin air, they actually come from a purchase of a customer. whether shared with a friend or uploaded by themselves.

So isn't the problem of piracy derived from the paying customer ?

**mmann** · June 22nd, 2011, 06:12

Originally Posted by Deano

So isn't the problem of piracy derived from the paying customer ?

Yes the paying customer is the problem, just ask Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers!

Regards, Mike Mann

**Deano** · June 22nd, 2011, 06:18

lol, hes the man!

Originally Posted by mmann

Yes the paying customer is the problem, just ask Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers!

Regards, Mike Mann

***Sieggie*** · June 22nd, 2011, 06:31

One of the problems the Dev's seem to want to ignore, is that their lack of patches to fix glaring problems, puts off people from wanting to buy the new products until all the bugs are worked out on the existing product. This leads to the circle of death whereby the dev's can't afford to spend development time on bug fixes, which generate no income, when they need new products to pay the employees. It will eventually spiral into the ground. The dev's then get angry at the existing customers for asking for updates and piss off the customers that were buying the new product, making even the new stuff unprofitable.

Not sure how to fix this problem in such a small niche market as we have here.

**Deano** · June 22nd, 2011, 06:35

Total rubbish, I assume this was directed at vstudios and with the above statement, do you condone Piracy ?

and yes my above comments was directed at you.

Originally Posted by Sieggie

One of the problems the Dev's seem to want to ignore, is that their lack of patches to fix glaring problems, puts off people from wanting to buy the new products until all the bugs are worked out on the existing product. This leads to the circle of death whereby the dev's can't afford to spend development time on bug fixes, which generate no income, when they need new products to pay the employees. It will eventually spiral into the ground. The dev's then get angry at the existing customers for asking for updates and piss off the customers that were buying the new product, making even the new stuff unprofitable.

Not sure how to fix this problem in such a small niche market as we have here.

**jojohnson9** · June 22nd, 2011, 06:39

What does "dummy spit" mean? Does it mean the same thing as "bulls..t" here in the USA? I'm not trying to stir things up. I have never heard the term before.

**Deano** · June 22nd, 2011, 06:43

Spitting there dummy out = being mardy/childish/im not playing anymore kind of attitude.

Originally Posted by jojohnson9

What does "dummy spit" mean? Does it mean the same thing as "bulls..t" here in the USA? I'm not trying to stir things up. I have never heard the term before.