I agree that some of these mods are well done and a lot of hard work are put into them, yes.
I don't agree, though, that IL2, Oleg or MG will benefit from it and neither will they ever implement these changes officially. If it does happen against all odds, it means that Oleg officially abandoned his firstborn.
I also disagree that this crack hasn't stolen anything. It's not that they stole money from Oleg, lowered number of sales or anything, but for a lot of people it took away a lot of faith in the brand and in the ability of MG to react in a way to these mods, for example to ban them from certain servers. I've seen it with my own eyes, that these mods were in used on protected servers and I it is exactly what you, Bearcat, and I feared a while ago: It's not about the people who did the mods, it's about people who abuse it.
Besides that, we have to face another threat: While these mods become more popular, a lot of people already posted here and on UBI, what the deal is about BoB. There are a lot of people who think that with the new engine sounds and additional flyables, even their favorite planes, that BoB can't get any better, especially with the limited timescale and the limited number of planes compared to IL2. And on this end of the story, it does steal money away from Oleg, because BoB will have less appeal to people who primarily fly in the Pacific and modern planes like the P51 or Dora and why should they go for SoW, if IL2 seems to be realistic enough and appears to have a larger community working on mods to make it even better? Just look at this board, how many people directly attack Oleg because he didn't fix XY while it was so little effort to do so!
So the second direct effect it has for MG is to push the limits even further up. What that means in terms of delays and further anger of people using the mod or not, well, you know the comments as good as I do.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think the mods are bad and neither are those working on them, but it's not as easy as to say: The mods are good work and they make IL2 better, so they're perfectly alright. It will always be a two-edged sword.
