No matter what you’re buying, it’s always good to be a careful and cautious consumer and when it comes to spending significant amounts of money on a piece of flight sim hardware you want to make sure that the product you’re buying is genuine and has the support of the developing company. Counterfeit products exist and yesterday hardware-maker VIRPIL made light of one that has been copying their products.
Update: March 27 at 7:37 am – Added a clarifying paragraph under “What’s this all about?”
The statement and the situation
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to review a bunch of VIRPIL’s products (including their WarBRD series and the MongoostT-50 CM3 HOTAS). They are often on the medium to higher end of flight sim hardware and in my view they are worth every penny. Well constructed hardware that gives you great flight sim experiences is a difficult thing to do and VIRPIL is among a handful of great companies that offer such an experience. Unfortunately it seems that another company has been copying their work.
It’s gotten to the point where VIRPIL appears to be taking action against the company. They have released a statement on their forums with a few details:
Hello VIRPILs,
Today we are unfortunately addressing a more serious situation that has recently come to light. Some of you may have noted the emergence of another team who have released controllers which share many design intricacies with our own products.
Firstly, in response to some speculation we would like to clarify that we have no connection with the team in question, nor is this team composed of previous VIRPIL staff.
Our legal partners have reviewed all elements of this situation closely and it has been determined that through the protections granted by both EU and Lithuanian laws, they are illegally reproducing and promoting protected VIRPIL designs, trademarks and intellectual property.
A case has been raised against the perpetrators and we will use the full weight of the law as required to protect VIRPIL, our staff and our community.
We want to thank everyone in the community, and even our competitors who have shown support for us. We have the utmost respect for our other competitors who are developing new products that encourage innovation within our niche and work in the best interest of the community. We look forward to continuing development of exciting products for all virtual pilots to enjoy!
Regards,
VIRPIL Controls Team
Read the posting on the VIRPIL forums here.
What’s this all about?
A couple of hardware reviewers have been reviewing products from a company recently, whose name I will not be publishing. Some of those reviewers noted that not only were the products similar but were essentially identical to VIRPILs products. Some of the more scrupulous refused to publish their reviews after they discovered the counterfeit nature. If you really want to track it down, some recent discussions on r/hotas are a place to start.
I should note that, to date, this is an accusation of one company copying another company’s work. It has yet to be proven in court.
The company that VIRPIL is specifically talking about in this notice appears to have pulled their materials from their website with the website resolving to a blank screen.
When a company does as this one appears to have done, the short term ramifications are few but the long term ones hurt significantly. A company like VIRPIL puts resources (time and money) into either developing or legally licensing the production of materials which helps keep the people who make these products or make these products better employed. We get a continual stream of hardware that is more capable and sometimes even more affordable as the technology improves over time.
If legitimate companies lose sales to a company that hasn’t supported that development process, it hurts our hobby by eventually causing the legitimate companies to evaporate. And that means that innovation slows or stops and we all lose out.
Hopefully that marks the beginning of the end of this particular saga but I implore everyone to be wary and buy their flight sim hardware from reputable storefronts and companies. It may cost a bit more that way but its better for everyone in the long run.
If you are buying flight sim hardware, be sure to visit an official storefront such as the one that VIRPIL operates for their hardware. With their increasing number of operations worldwide you should hopefully be able to find a place to get legitimate hardware.
Stormbirds 
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