Why Do Most Flight Sim Businesses Fail?

Recorded live at #FSExpo 2025 at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence. Most flight sim users don’t think of flight sim developers as businesses— they think of us as a means of getting what they want to fly. And of course, they expect those planes to be perfect, cheap, and delivered by tomorrow morning. But have you ever stopped to think about what it really takes to recreate the systems of a real aircraft—systems that hundreds of engineers develop in real life? Flight sim developers are people just like you, passionate about creating awesome airplanes. But we also need to make it sustainable, because, well, we all have bills to pay. In this talk, I’ll take you through a day in the life of a flight sim developer and explore what truly determines whether a company finishes a project or disappears forever, like so many others have. We’ll dig into the challenges developers face just to survive—challenges most customers never even think about. And finally, we’ll discuss how the community can better support developers. After all, we’re all in this together. If developers aren’t supported, the community as a whole suffers—and none of us want that. Let’s make sure we’re building a future where the flight sim world can really thrive!