There’s some truly fantastic creators out there in the MSFS Marketplace and there are still getting to grips with things developers too that may not always put out the top quality assets but who are doing their level best to bring something unique and engaging. All good! There are some developers on the marketplace, however, who are something else and one of them has finally been removed.

The background of what just happened

There are a few extremely questionable developers out there in the MSFS Marketplace space. One of them is undoubtedly Mscenery. The developer has a full slate of products that cover a wide variety of popular aircraft but they tend to not be worth the money that you’re paying for. Limited or no descriptions, AI generated imagery instead of real screenshots that don’t represent the final product, and offering products that have barebones functionality often pulling avionics from one included airplane and shoving them into another with limited functionality.

To be clear, they do sell you something, but its often not at a quality level that could be considered payware worthy.

Worse, the developer has been gaming the system by giving their products large numbers of 5-star reviews. Even some of the best developers with top end products score a varying range of scores….not these. All 5 star with perhaps one dissenting vote from the unfortunate person who bought one.

I had fully intended to write an editorial on this very subject matter when content creator and MSFS aircraft reviewer AvAngel brought it up in a recent video essay. But Microsoft has beat me to the punch.

Mscenery is now gone from the marketplace

Today Microsoft has announced that they are pulling the Mscenery products from the Marketplace. Here’s the statement:

We want to share an important update regarding content available in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024 in-game Marketplaces.

Over time, we have received a significant amount of feedback from the community regarding products developed by Mscenery. After receiving a large number of complaints about the 1) low quality of Mscenery content, 2) lacking information in product descriptions and misleading images and 3) validity of high user scores, we have made the decision to stop offering Mscenery content for sale in the Marketplace, effective immediately.

For customers who have already purchased Mscenery products, please be assured that your existing purchases will remain accessible and usable as usual. This change only affects new sales of their content within the Marketplace.

We greatly value the feedback and engagement from the flight simulation community, and decisions like this are not made lightly. Your input continues to play a critical role in helping us maintain a high-quality and trusted Marketplace experience for all simmers.

Thank you for your continued support and for helping us improve Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Sincerely,
The Microsoft Flight Simulator Team

Read the statement here!

To be clear, its great to have lots of developers and some developers are going to offer quality levels that vary but sometimes the quality together with obvious manipulation of rating system makes for a bad experience and will lure unsuspecting members into purchasing something that isn’t worth their time or money.

But I do think this is good news and hopefully a sign of a slightly more closely moderated marketplace to come.