It wouldn’t be flight simulation without a developer and community controversy and we’ve got the latest one that has erupted following the announcement that Synaptic and iniBuilds intend to launch the A220-300 tomorrow on the MSFS Marketplace. This is what has happened so far.

Ready to launch but with some twists

Synaptic Simulations long awaited A220 airliner release is, according to an announcement earlier today, set to launch on the Microsoft Flight Simulator Marketplace tomorrow. The aircraft is, like previous iniBuilds releases, intended to come out on the Marketplace exclusively at first and then people will be able to buy it from the iniBuilds store later or they can transfer the license from Marketplace to iniBuilds at that point. The price has now been confirmed as £49.99 or approximately $66.43 USD.

So far, nothing too terribly controversial. Now here is where things have blown up a bit. Previously, Synaptic Simulations have stated that the A220-100 would be a free update to come sometime after the A220-300. Plans have now been changed and we’ve only just learned about it (the day before release) through the FAQ released earlier today. Here’s what they are now saying about the arrival of the A220-100 and ACJ variant:

The Synaptic A220-100 and ACJ will be a separate release with many quality of life and feature improvements such as HUD, working circuit breakers in the avionics bay, and many more. Any improvements from this release will arrive for free on the Synaptic A220-300. The variants are currently in active development and we will share more when we are ready to do so.

The policy of splitting up variant releases is not unheard of. PMDG do it all the time, Fenix split the A320 from the A319/321, and Just Flight split the F70 and F100. Developers spend money to develop products like these and need to recoup sometimes significant costs.

The community is up in arms that the change was buried in a FAQ and not addressed more directly in a statement. Up until now, the understanding was that the A220-100 would indeed be coming as a free update as was previously indicated.

Plans change, expenses mount, and developers need to adapt but clear communication is also important. For the moment, Synaptic have limited access to their Discord server after a flood of angry (and reportedly threatening) messages were posted.

It’s probably not launch experience that anyone had intended but here we are. Look for iniBuilds and Synaptic to release the A220 (just the -300) tomorrow sometime during the day.