A good outcome for all. The developers did exactly what was needed to make the issue widely public and FDev responded promptly.
#support3rdparty - Why we temporarily shut down our sites.
- Thread starter themroc
- Start date
- Status
Hmmmokay, then....
If you say so.
I'm lost for words...
Which is why I'm typing rather than speaking.
This thread needs to be closed.
Last edited:
Thank you, Frontier!
Thank you, 3rd party developers!
The quick response by Frontier shows why I support independent developers. Just imagine the response if E
was developed by one of the "big" companies. The ones that take people to court over developing 3rd party tools to begin with.
I really enjoy Elite Dangerous and find that my favorite 3rd party tools are essential to enjoying my limited time to play. It's a huge benefit to all the players if the two groups work together. If we all (players too) work together and support each other then the woderful games Frontier has been putting out for 30+ years can continue. I'm looking forward to that.
Thank you, 3rd party developers!
The quick response by Frontier shows why I support independent developers. Just imagine the response if E
was developed by one of the "big" companies. The ones that take people to court over developing 3rd party tools to begin with.I really enjoy Elite Dangerous and find that my favorite 3rd party tools are essential to enjoying my limited time to play. It's a huge benefit to all the players if the two groups work together. If we all (players too) work together and support each other then the woderful games Frontier has been putting out for 30+ years can continue. I'm looking forward to that.
Last edited:
I think what the 3rd'ers did was a big mistake. Mostly for themselves.
Whatever their complaints, they colluded to (try to) significantly damage a community-led event whilst hypocritically claiming to be 'supporting' our community.
Whilst they might imagine they have a 'victory', I think it will be Pyrrhic, and I will be amazed if in time FDev do not 'reply' in a manner that pulls the rug from beneath their feet.
I also think that they have alienated a significant portion of their users, and people will vote with their feet - I for one have configured EDMC to no longer publish my discovered data out to the wider community.
The third party developers are clearly highly talented and passionate supporters of ED, and I do respect them and all they have worked hard to achieve.
However, ED will continue long long after they have lost interest and moved on to new projects, or real-life has taken over, and this is why FDev can never be beholden to any of them, nor should be.
- - - Updated - - -
Tactics v strategy....
Whatever their complaints, they colluded to (try to) significantly damage a community-led event whilst hypocritically claiming to be 'supporting' our community.
Whilst they might imagine they have a 'victory', I think it will be Pyrrhic, and I will be amazed if in time FDev do not 'reply' in a manner that pulls the rug from beneath their feet.
I also think that they have alienated a significant portion of their users, and people will vote with their feet - I for one have configured EDMC to no longer publish my discovered data out to the wider community.
The third party developers are clearly highly talented and passionate supporters of ED, and I do respect them and all they have worked hard to achieve.
However, ED will continue long long after they have lost interest and moved on to new projects, or real-life has taken over, and this is why FDev can never be beholden to any of them, nor should be.
- - - Updated - - -
Tactics v strategy....
I think what the 3rd'ers did was a big mistake. Mostly for themselves.
Whatever their complaints, they colluded to (try to) significantly damage a community-led event whilst hypocritically claiming to be 'supporting' our community.
Whilst they might imagine they have a 'victory', I think it will be Pyrrhic, and I will be amazed if in time FDev do not 'reply' in a manner that pulls the rug from beneath their feet.
I also think that they have alienated a significant portion of their users, and people will vote with their feet - I for one have configured EDMC to no longer publish my discovered data out to the wider community.
The third party developers are clearly highly talented and passionate supporters of ED, and I do respect them and all they have worked hard to achieve.
However, ED will continue long long after they have lost interest and moved on to new projects, or real-life has taken over, and this is why FDev can never be beholden to any of them, nor should be.
- - - Updated - - -
Tactics v strategy....
Frontier is quite new to the self-publishing, no longer have publisher to take care of the 'big bad publisher' business for them, the whole lie repeated in here ad nauseum about 'doing it for free', check the links from the first post, each has either donate button, ads or both, so monetary gain with I assume no contracts on the use of IP (since reverse engineering was involved etc as described in the history). Live by the sword
X-Terminator
Banned
NEXT: VoiceAttack for a RESET PANEL POSITION so we can target menus without needing to first reset the panels first.
"Monetary gain" that's hilarious. You do realize these guys have to pay for their own hosting, right? And since they get a ton of page views, that hosting has to be of good quality? Meaning it's not exactly cheap? You guys need to settle down, not even FD is on your side anymore.
IP? I guess you didn't actually read the history. Or Ed's posts. Or even use basic human logic?
Did you miss them boasting about millions of pageviews? Even if their websites were too heavy to make them profit still money was involved, try to explain to the court you were getting a paycheck but just had too much javascript so you made a loss
Thanks for the response. No, I'm not really into shooting arrows although being human I have fired a few now and then on the Forum. Feel bad about it later. I really love fragment cannons in the game if that helps!
I just made an observation after reading 120 pages of posts how a lot of players (probably a lot more than a handful) felt very hurt over these actions. Some who support these actions only want to hear the positives and not the negatives thus dismiss, redicule and personally put down whose who disagree. I suspect that this is done because until Frontier makes a decision they worry that the opposition might win! That of course works both ways. I'm being hit with a few personal put downs in the thread now as I write this. Oh well, it is life on the Forum.
The point is people were hurt and for the most part totally dismissed without even a specific apology (unless I missed it) for the hurt that was caused. I'm sure that Frontier saw this as well, was upset with it and their concerns probably came up in that 5 hour meeting. Still it is awesome how the issues worked out for the better. My post was to demonstrate a negative factor in these actions so as to hopefully minimize this kind of negative response in the future.
As for me I'm probably in the middle. I've had an Elite site for decades even doing 3rd party technical support for F:FE 22 years ago using modems (what a slow way to communicate) so I know the frustrations. But me and many others around the world worked around them providing great results for the players without a websites shutdown as occurred. That is probably why I speak up for those who felt hurt. Times and technology have changed. People not so much.
An apology? Why not? Couldn't hurt. I'll make it easy and write one! Just have everyone sign off on the following then we can put this to rest! Of course this is a Forum so nothing ever rests but we can give it a try!
_____________________________________________
"The members of the #support3rdparty would like to express their sincere apologies to all players who were emotionally upset, hurt or felt used by our actions on the 27th of April, 2017. We did feel that there was no other recourse and that our actions, however they are perceived, were justifiable in at least starting the communications towards a positive solution that will benefit every player for years to come. But we do recognize that players were hurt by our actions which is understandable, regrettable and we will always consider this in any future communications. We love the game and all of the players and hope to heal the wounds by offering some of the best 3rd party applications for the game that has ever been invented to date. Again our sincere apologies and with your help and assistance all things are possible."
Last edited:
I hope this is sarcasm, but I fear that it isn't.
I'm truly at a loss for words, and I think I just need to not post in this thread anymore. I just can't comprehend some of the opinions in here. So much vitriol and hate for people doing the community great good, I don't know if it's out of fear, jealousy, or plain ignorance.
To all of you 3rd party support devs, thanks, and keep up the good work. I hope Frontier keeps their word and makes your work easier in the near future.
What exactly do you not understand? Hosting ads/donate button makes them commercial entity, people paid them for service while using not their IP (and against wishes of the owners of the IP as described in OP about reverse engineering the ipad app and API). Big publishers would shot it down straight away and this whole fiasco would not play like this, yet here we are. We'll see how this all plays out, but being burned on the people who claim 'good of community', yet hurt it in such way, yeah, good luck with this approach in the future
Well that lasted long...
This is one of the reasons why I like backing early access games like Hellion and SC - they still rely on support from the community because without us they can't finish their games. As a result, they tend to be fairly transparent about development and push out frequent updates (example: Hellion's blog https://www.playhellion.com/blog/ and their bi-weekly patches). On the other hand released games like ED are already fully funded so they don't really owe the community anything - in fact it's in their best interests to keep their cards close to their vests, because they have more to lose by being open than they have to gain; they don't have anyone to impress, and their competitors could steal their thunder.
This is one of the reasons why I like backing early access games like Hellion and SC - they still rely on support from the community because without us they can't finish their games. As a result, they tend to be fairly transparent about development and push out frequent updates (example: Hellion's blog https://www.playhellion.com/blog/ and their bi-weekly patches). On the other hand released games like ED are already fully funded so they don't really owe the community anything - in fact it's in their best interests to keep their cards close to their vests, because they have more to lose by being open than they have to gain; they don't have anyone to impress, and their competitors could steal their thunder.
Last edited:
First of all, I think Frontier's response was spot on. Secondly, I don't see the benefit of rendering these web resources irrelevant. In fact, the game benefits that much more by having players so deeply involved in sharing information. Frontier is providing a persistent world experience without a subscription or pay to win. They benefit from demand for the game and cosmetic purchases in the game. Having the community involved only benefits Frontier. I think they not only realize this, but responded about as well as could be hoped and I think they appreciate the 3rd party information community more than most people give them credit for.
Wow, ok, so you're either willfully ignorant or tragically facile about the economics of the internet. Either way, I'll just leave you to that. Good luck.
Here, this is how you make money on the internet:
I'm sorry if hosting costs were too much, but they supported it by ads, therefore got money from google, they themselves boasted about the numbers, would need to see their financials if they did in fact pay out of their pocket, doesn't change a thing that money was involved which is usually a no-no for any fansite
Facile it is!
You really are dense aren't you. So you're telling me that because they are fan sites, they should just pay the hundreds of Euros monthly for server upkeep out of their pockets? Thousands of ED players use the sites they collected, in case of Inara other QoL functionalities or applications they themselves made, and you think they should just do this out of the goodness of their hearts, and to hell with costs? I'm sure you are also that guy who got the pitchforks out when modders wanted some recompense for their Skyrim mods, right?
Most of it is open source, so if you don't trust it you can download the source code and get a friend to check it for you and build you the binaries. These tools tend to be pretty small, so hiding something like a keylogger or other malware would be pretty hard to do.
- Status