Combat Pilot’s Executive Producer, Jason Williams, made a surprise announcement earlier today indicating that he was stepping away from Combat Pilot development saying “I’ve done all I can for the sim and my usefulness to this product and the flight-sim genre has now expired.” The announcement has, of course, reverberated around the community. What happens next? Let’s have a look at the full statement from Jason and from the rest of the Entropy.Aero team.

Change of leadership

Jason Williams has been a force within the combat flight sim scene for well over a decade taking the helm at a critical moment for the IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles series, working with Rise of Flight and other projects prior to that. Jason’s most recent contribution was leading the efforts to build Combat Pilot – a new combat flight simulation being developed from the ground-up with Entropy.Aero. Now, we’ve learned that Jason is stepping away.

Here’s a copy of what was posted to the Combat Pilot Discord earlier today:

Hello pilots – I didn’t want to post this yesterday on April Fool’s Day, because it’s not a gag, but I want to let you know I’m no longer part of the Combat Pilot team. I’ve done all I can for the sim and my usefulness to this product and the flight-sim genre has now expired and I must say goodbye. I can’t say much about why this has happened other than to say there are differences that cannot be overcome. We have all experienced this in our lives at some point. The Entropy Aero team will carry on with development. I wish them the best of luck. I also want to thank the investors who have taken a chance on the first original hardcore combat flight-sim to be developed in many years. I especially want to thank the entire Combat Pilot community for all the fantastic support you’ve given and the enthusiasm you’ve shown since the very beginning of this project. I have many friends here that I’ve known for quite a long time. Thank you for your steadfast friendship over the years including these challenging last few. Finally, I want to thank anyone who’s ever purchased a Rise of Flight, IL-2 Great Battles or Combat Pilot title I’ve produced. Your patronage has allowed me to have a career doing what I loved for many years and it’s greatly appreciated. I’ll always be a fan of this hobby, WWII history and military aviation. Best of luck to everyone.

Jason

That announcement was quickly followed by one from “Snafu” on the Discord server representing the development team at Entropy.Aero.

Community members!
We have important news to share.
As some of you will already know, Jason Williams has left the Combat Pilot project.

The Entropy.Aero team has a lot to thank Jason for.
Without Jason’s vision, the Combat Pilot project would not not be where it is today and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with one of the greats in the flight sim industry. Jason has a tremendous track record and is known around the world for his great achievements, and we intend to honor this legacy by continuing on the path he chose for us. We are very grateful for the last 3 years working together, breaking new ground in the flightsim genre.

The project will continue as Jason planned. Building on the foundations he proposed, we will continue developing Combat Pilot – Carrier Qualification to be released into early access later this year. To be specific, the roadmap for the project remains exactly as-is.

Our resolve is stronger than ever. We were very happy with the enthusiastic reception of last month’s demo during the Steam “Next Fest”, which was a proof of concept in itself. It showed us we have every reason to be confident of delivering a next generation flight sim.

We will publish a developer diary next week (which goes to the Patreons tomorrow) with detailed information.

We wish Jason all the best for his future endeavors

We’ll be looking to the upcoming developer diary in the coming days to see how Entropy.Aero manages the transition to a new leader for the project and what their goals for Combat Pilot will be though it sounds like the overall direction remains the same – develop a new World War II focused combat flight sim title covering the Pacific theatre as a start.

Reaction

This was certainly unexpected news for me!

Combat Pilot had largely come about because of Jason’s vision to bring an entirely new title to the industry that had largely been divided between War Thunder on the one end, DCS World on the other with IL-2 Sturmovik sitting comfortably somewhere in between. Making Combat Pilot work is a tall order but with an experienced team and a veteran industry leader at the helm it seemed to me to be a good bet that it would happen.

How does that feel now? Uncertain is probably the best word.

It’ll take some time to process the change, and while not everyone synced well with Jason’s approach, Combat Pilot is in most ways the product that combat flight sim fans have been asking for and I think that earned a lot of hope and goodwill for everyone involved.

The team behind Combat Pilot is closely connected to the Call to Arms – Gates of Hell: Ostfront WWII strategy game. There is talent, there is knowledge of the subject matter, and there is a track record for producing great content. It’s surely part of the reason why Jason connected with this team in the first place.

So I write this with hope that the original vision will continue on and that Combat Pilot becomes a competitor in a part of the combat flight sim genre that needs a new competitor to shake things up a bit. Let’s see how it goes.

Learn more about Combat Pilot here.