I recently suspended my pro account since I wasn’t getting on as much, and decided tonight to do a little flying. Learned really quick that in order to enjoy this game you have to pay the subscription. Very few airports that can be visited along with very limited air space that can legally be flown in. What’s the reason for the limitations? I understand if it’s the monetary reason since upgrading and making the game more lucrative cost money, but is that the only reason? Kind of bites for kids or anyone who simply wants to play a good sims game.
I presume that the lack of regions (and aircraft) may help encourage users to pay for the subscription (evident based on this topic), whether that be one month, six months, or one year.
So, if I had to guess, I would say that it’s all based on monetary value, especially given the expense for staff, servers, the forum, etc.
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Monetary is the main reason. The issue is that IF isn’t a game that is released then never touched again by the developers. We receive multiple updates each year, and as such the developers must be paid.
Not to mention, IF has a large technical infrastructure. To help keep your multiplayer servers running for example, a technology called Kubernetes (k8s) is used. K8s is basically a way to balance the load for an application between many machines. Many machines means you have to pay for those many machines, and that’s not a one time cost. To avoid having to maintain the physical servers, most companies including IF outsource the maintenance to a server provider, who also has staff to pay.
Then there’s the airport and scenery servers, which are fast because of a system called CDN which isn’t particularly cheap either. You can read more about it in this post.
So yes, it is primarily because IF needs money to pay for the ongoing costs associated with running the simulator and its infrastructure.
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Are the costs associated with operating IF available or is this something that’s held exclusively private? I am curious what kind of expense, even if it’s ballpark, are associated on an annual cost just to keep the game operational.
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In all honesty, that’s none of our business.
However, if I had to guess, I would say that the team puts the money they earn towards the simulator, and of course, to pay themselves.
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I would assume their profit margins are very slim, so they have to charge what they do. Paying staff to develop things, and paying to have the servers constantly going is a huge expense
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When you travel, do you call the airline and ask for them to show you how much is spent on fuel, the lease for the aircraft, pilot pay, etc? :)