Ariane and McPhat End Agreement

Ariane Design and McPhat Studios have ended their agreement in which McPhat had been contracted to develop repaints for Ariane's 737 series of aircraft. McPhat states that they initiated the termination of the agreement due to Ariane "not living up to their contractual (financial) agreements for an already longer period of time [sic]." Sounds to me like Ariane owed McPhat some money, and didn't pay up. Ariane, in a separate posting, claims McPhat did not deliver what had been contractually promised.

Most astonishingly, the whole mess seems to have devolved into a "he-said-she-said" exchange of press releases, complete with finger-pointing and stopping just short of insulting each other's mothers.

I generally try to keep the tone of this blog positive, and shy away from saying anything negative about anyone in the flight simming business. However, I have read a few things on the forums over at AVSIM about Ariane that give me pause when it comes to dealing with them. Supposedly they do not even have an automated purchase system set up to deliver registration keys when you buy one of their products. You actually have to wait for a support person there to email the key to you, and there have been horror stories of lost and delayed keys coming out of Ariane. If I had just paid US $100 to fly one of their planes, I would find this unacceptable -- I want to fly the damn thing immediately.

I find Ariane's 737 products very attractive-looking, but I think I'll be content to wait until PMDG rolls out their 737 NGv2 next year. I've never had any problems with PMDG, and their products have been top-notch. Perhaps if Ariane changes some of their business practices, I will reconsider.