Quite a bit of DCS news to cover this week. The latest DCS World Weekend News has been a bit of a firecracker with a lengthy statement on the RAZBAM situation (plus a bit more context from me as best I can offer). There’s a summary of recent core updates, and a new midweek sale. Also, Heatblur have made a lengthy statement of their own on a recent lack of updates. Let’s review!
Eagle Dynamics comments on RAZBAM situation and more
Back in April of 2024, we learned through public statements that Eagle Dynamics and third party developer RAZBAM were engaged in a significant dispute between the two companies. RAZBAM at that point made it known that they were halting support and development on their modules while they awaited a resolution of the dispute.
Various comments and statements have since come out from both sides since then. Official statements have been few and far between but that hasn’t stopped some third party contractors (particularly for RAZBAM who have tended to operate with a looser mesh of employees and contractors) from weighing in on the situation with their own perspectives and thoughts on the issue.
That has lead to a variety of narratives being shared around the community on various Reddit groups and Discords. The most recent, purporting to be a leak of a WhatsApp discussion between Eagle Dynamics CEO Nick Grey and RAZBAM CEO from 2023 with regards to payments and on work with the FAE (Ecuadorian Air Force). The later project, the work with the FAE on a professional Super Tucano project, seems to be part of the dispute between the two companies and an alleged breech of contract.
The comments appear to have prompted the following response from Eagle Dynamics in this DCS World Weekend News update.
In response to recent comments and questions made by Razbam Simulations, its proxies and/or external developers, Eagle Dynamics confirms that it signed a settlement agreement with Razbam at the end of 2024 to put an end to the existing disputes and that such agreement also provides for a strict confidentiality requirement that prevents Eagle Dynamics from disclosing further information.
Eagle Dynamics can, however, confirm that Razbam instructed Eagle Dynamics to cease selling the modules developed by Razbam and its independent developers. All modules continue to function ‘as is’ and despite not receiving any access to source codes or cooperation from Razbam and its external developers, Eagle Dynamics will do its best to ensure that these modules continue to function in 2.9.X.
We are still hoping to be able to implement the settlement agreement and to find a satisfactory outcome to the current situation, in the best interests of our valued community.
As the statement suggests, the full contents of the settlement agreement aren’t known, however, we’ve known since April 7 that RAZBAM modules had been asked to be removed from the store. It’s unclear what the status of the settlement agreement is right now with contractors and former contractors from The RAZBAM team suggesting via Discord that the settlement has not been adhered to.
Meanwhile, and perhaps more pressing for DCS World users directly, great concern for the status of modules post 2.9.X has prompted a flurry of questions. According to NineLine, Eagle Dynamics Community Manager, on the company’s Discord server, there is an expectation that the modules may not continue to function beyond 2.9.x. Responding to a question, the following statement was given:
You are not reading it right, it was about the current and up until 2.9 ends. That is the future. If nothing changes, the modules will stop working beyond 2.9. Has NOTHING to do with the agreement beyond the agreement not being implenented right now, but we still hope it will be making this all moot.
This is certainly unwelcome news for owners of one or more RAZBAM modules (I own all four personally!). Initially I was prepared to read it as there being uncertainty going into the future but this sounds more like the modules will be deprecated in a future version of the sim. Similar to the way that the VEAO Hawk module was deprecated and is no longer a part of modern DCS World. This loss, however, hurts significantly more with four modules making up a significant percentage of the DCS module total.
A small shred of hope remains with intent to implement the settlement agreement. That may be worth hanging on to, however, nothing seems to have gone well during the last year and a half of dispute and the realist position may now be that we’re going to have to accept the end of RABAM modules in future iterations of DCS. I expect that the news is not going to be taken well and that this will hurt quite a bit more than the prior situation.
Midweek sale
Eagle Dynamics have once again extended their summer sale or perhaps restarted their summer sale with a new “Midweek Sale” which will end on the 28th of July at 15:00 GMT. This continues the discounts that have been available through a good chunk of the month with plenty of modules at 50% off their regular price.
Latest DCS World update
Meanwhile, on Wednesday DCS World 2.9.18.12722 was released with fixes and new core features added across much of the sim. Some of those updates include the addition of the Sniper XR pod for DCS: F-16C, new terrain radar for DCS: F/A-18, a significant George AI update for DCS: AH-64D, and various other core feature updates that include some new loadout options for the B-52 and B-1B.
All of the changes are listed in the latest DCS World change log.
Heatblur addresses no recent updates
Some fans of Heatblur’s DCS products will no doubt also have noticed that Heatblur hasn’t issued any module updates in the last two patches that have gone out. Addressing the issue, Cobra847 from the Heatblur team posted a lengthy update on the developer’s Discord on July 16 talking about what their plans are and the things that are coming along.
Hope everyone’s having a fantastic summer! We’re having a busy one here at Heatblur; but it may not look like it just yet. Sadly, we had very lofty goals for various releases in these summer months, but the ambition of our roadmap has made it sensitive to forks in the road and delays; and subsequently the next DCS patch will again be empty and devoid of Heatblur changes.
We’ve got a simply put, comprehensive list of new additions, changes and updates to essentially every product coming! Some of these include another large Viggen update, the early -A for the Tomcat, the A-6E AI, and a slew of new stuff for the F-4 such as Jester Pave Spike, Combat Tree, a novel EFB feature, and persistent aircraft; a feature that will be especially interesting for mission makers, campaign creators and the player him or herself- who may now have to manage how they treat the aircraft. For this we also improved the wear and tear systems, added various new failures and more. The complexity and size of some of these additions have made it necessary for us to avoid the monthly update cadence, and we’ve run into some delays on finalizing/testing some of these features.
We’re also growing – and are excited to talk about the A-6E and F-14BU being in active development and the imminent release of the F-4E Phantom II for Microsoft Flight Simulator! This is in parallel with, of course, the continued quest to scale the colossus that is the Eurofighter.
We’ll be writing much more about many of these additions and changes in an upcoming development update; but in the meantime we’re working hard to start delivering features throughout August and September. Apologies for another empty changelog from Heatblur for now, but no matter how diligent our branching would be, all products are in such a state of flux that it would be difficult to ship smaller fixes without sacrificing the testing process.
Thank you for your patience and support, we hope it’ll be worth it once many of the elements above drop and we’re excited to share more ASAP!
Sincerely, Team Heatblur
Heatblur had intended to release a series of updates through the early part of the summer, however, as it often goes in flight simulation development (and software development in general), the actual practice of putting everything together sometimes takes much longer than anticipated.
It does sound like a lot of interesting stuff is in the works from Heatblur and the imminent release of their F-4 Phantom on Microsoft Flight Simulator is sure to be a boon to simmers on that platform (not to mention opening Heatblur up to a rather large sim market once again).
Stay tuned for more.
Stormbirds 
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