It's a peaceful evening in the sky above O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. The air is still, barely a hint of clouds overhead. Visibility extends for miles. Conditions are perfect for flight. In fact, air traffic control just gave a pilot word that they are clear for takeoff. The sky’s the limit, it would seem. But the controller isn't seated at O'Hare, and neither is the pilot. They are located thousands of miles apart, brought together by a Discord channel and a multiplayer server for Microsoft Flight Simulator, both operated by a bustling community known as fsATC, or flight simulator air traffic control.
Formed in the summer of 2019, fsATC is one of a number of communities that have cropped up around flight simulators with the goal of keeping the game as realistic as possible.
Perhaps you remember entering the cockpit of a classic version of Microsoft Flight Simulator and buzzing the Eiffel Tower or landing on the Golden Gate Bridge—the type of reckless feats that become possible only within a video game. Members of fsATC and others in the flight sim community would rather not have the skies littered with daredevils. Instead, they fly by staying grounded in reality. Air traffic controllers keep tabs on flying conditions and are tasked with clearing flight plans proposed by pilots looking to complete a journey. Success is declared when a plane safely lands at its designated destination.
If this sounds a little mundane, well, consider that a virtue. When everything goes right—when air traffic controllers and pilots cooperate—planes take off and land without the slightest hint of a problem. The community as a whole operated on a similar premise: As long as everyone kept the cooperative spirit, it continued to grow. That worked until one founding member of fsATC, like a pilot flouting the directions of air traffic control, decided to go rogue and veered directly into turbulence that shook the whole community.
Evan Reiter, a real-life airline pilot and cofounder of the Flight Simulation Association—an organization dedicated to the growth of the flight sim community—says that the flight simulators, a relatively forgotten genre of games that seemed to be relegated to memories from the early 2000s, have been given new life in recent years. This is thanks in large part to the release of Flight Simulator, a reboot of the classic Microsoft title that dropped last year. The two versions of Flight Simulator available through Steam—Microsoft Flight Simulator X and the newer Microsoft Flight Simulator—average more than 6,500 concurrent players combined at any given time, according to SteamCharts. That’s enough to put the games around the top 100 most played.
“There has been an influx of people, new ideas, and support for enthusiast flight simulation with the recent Microsoft Flight Simulator release,” Reiter says. “We’ve seen plenty of new simmers, but also lots of people who had dropped the hobby coming back, both due to the new release and the pandemic.”
One of the primary appeals of the title is its emphasis on realism and the capability of modern computers to reliably deliver a simulation experience. According to Reiter, the title has “made it much further into the real world, both gaming and aviation, than other simulator platforms.” He says that he has seen more people involved in the aviation industry, “from aerospace engineers to airline pilots,” talking about flight simulation, and Flight Simulator is the biggest driver.
Reiter says that the flight simulator community has done such a solid job accurately replicating the flight experience that he believes some “could probably manage to fly an aircraft, at least for some period of time and in the right conditions”—though he notes he’d rather stay on the ground for those flights.
A member of the fsATC community who goes by DorkToast said he got sucked in by the realism after briefly becoming obsessed with all the ins and outs of air traffic control. “I went in there and you had these people ranging from real pilots to real air traffic controllers that actually do this in their spare time because they love air traffic control,” he explains of his first visits to the fsATC Discord.
FsATC was a perfect home for people like DorkToast because it was set up to bridge the gap between the beginners and the pros. It was formed largely by a four-person team: RedMugs, Salad, Ninja (who would ultimately leave as the server started getting popular), and a person who identified themselves to the other administrators as AJ. They set up a multiplayer server for Microsoft Flight Simulator X, a game that was originally released in 2006 but saw a resurgence in popularity when it was released on Steam in 2014.
From the outset, the community was approachable to beginners and impressively thorough. It offered an in-depth flight school and air traffic control training program that helped beginners get their wings. Once training was completed, they could join in on the roleplaying action, serving as air traffic control or as pilots. Voice channels in Discord were used to communicate, and the fsATC game server hosted the flights, which had people jet-setting across the virtual world.
RedMugs was just 14 years old when the server launched and didn’t have many resources to keep the community going as it started to grow—and it was growing fast. From June to August 2019, it amassed over 1,400 members. By the end of the year, the Discord had more than 6,000 members. According to fellow founder and administrator Salad, AJ tried to step up, offering an AWS server as the community was growing in 2019. AJ would later claim to pay $2,500 in hosting fees and a laptop to host the community’s game server—though neither were in use for very long.
AJ was also attempting to get more involved in other ways. According to RedMugs, AJ told the community that he was communicating with Microsoft. At this point, fsATC was one of the biggest independent air traffic control communities, and with the new Flight Simulator game just over the horizon, it seemed like a prime time to take advantage of their position.
Bodeezl, a current member of fsATC and other flight sim communities, says that AJ wanted to make fsATC “a more professional place” in order to appeal to Microsoft. At one point AJ changed his LinkedIn to identify himself as a founder of fsATC and started telling people that he filed a trademark for the community’s name. “RedMugs was young and just didn't understand how great of a community they had made,” he explains. “When RedMugs and Salad would joke about deleting the server, AJ flipped out and did anything to stop it.”
“Anything” included filing a lawsuit against RedMugs. In what could best be described as an intimidation tactic, AJ made a filing with the Porter Superior Court in Indiana demanding that control of the fsATC Discord server be handed over to AJ, identified in the court filing as Arturas Kerelis.
Kerelis is a lot of things, though typically none that he claims. He is perhaps best known as a bit internet character who crops up with the occasional scheme for internet attention. He’s scored headlines by posing as an entrepreneur offering a $10,000 bounty to crack the iPhone’s TouchID, positioning himself as the organizer of the Occupy Chicago movement, and allegedly pretending to be a mega-donor behind the Lincoln Project. When approached about his time in fsATC, Kerelis responded, “No comment.”
Not all of this was known to RedMugs and Salad at the time, but they had been trying to distance themselves from Kerelis for a while prior to the lawsuit. “ [Kerelis] always seemed to feel like he was the owner of the server,” RedMugs says, noting that it became a major point of tension within the community. While the other founders were interested in developing the community and focusing on making the flight experience as enjoyable as possible, they said it felt like Kerelis was more interested in trying to cash in, looking for sponsorships and other opportunities to monetize. Eventually, the fsATC staff decided it was best to ban Kerelis.
If the court document could be read as a threat, a series of direct messages allegedly sent by Kerelis to RedMugs made it explicit. “You’re a 14-year-old who is the defendant in a case about to be reviewed by the Indiana Circuit Court and the [Pennsylvania] Attorney General’s office unless you make the right decision today,” Kerelis said in a message in January 2020. “You don’t need this on your public record.”
RedMugs, not knowing any better at the time and facing increased pressure via DMs from Kerelis, gave in to the demands. According to Salad, RedMugs handed off the Discord server to Kerelis—a position that messages between RedMugs and Kerelis corroborate and which was also relayed in anecdotes by two other members of fsATC who were in the Discord server watching the drama unfold in private and public channels. Bodeezl, who is still in contact with Kerelis, contests this. He says that the server was never under Kerelis’ control and was turned over to a third party, but would not provide additional details regarding who took over. Either way, RedMugs and Salad had effectively been cut out of fsATC, both choosing to jump ship after Kerelis completed the coup.
In a message directed to the entire server, Kerelis explained that, in his view, he was trying to do what was best for the community. He had allegedly come to a financial agreement with Microsoft that included giving fsATC early access to the upcoming Flight Simulator title, though he claimed the details were protected by a nondisclosure agreement. Former members of fsATC disagree on whether there was any truth to this, and some claimed Kerelis forged a document to make it appear that there was an agreement. A Microsoft employee working on the Flight Simulator title confirmed having contact with Kerelis, but said "no discussions of partnerships were had." Microsoft declined to comment further.
The hostile takeover was met with revolt inside the community. There had been rumors and mentions of a lawsuit for days, but little clarity within the community as to what was happening exactly. As soon as word got out that Kerelis took the server through legal thrats, the Discord started to blow up with protest. “I remember waking up at about 2:30 am and seeing people raiding the server,” Bodeezl recalls. It hit in waves, as members joined the server and realized what happened. Members were spamming messages, rendering channels basically unusable, and throwing the typically low-key community into upheaval and disarray. Bodeezl, a “first responder” to the flame war, was promoted and tasked with helping get the server under control. Some of the dissenting voices were banned until the situation calmed down.
While chaos ensued in fsATC, RedMugs and Salad had moved on to a new project: Downwind. The concept was the exact same: a flight simulation community that focused on realistic air traffic control that appealed to people of all skill levels. They saw a flood of people who were exiled from fsATC, as well as plenty who willingly left.
Meanwhile, as the dust settled in fsATC and the community started to regain momentum, the supposed relationship with Microsoft cratered. Instead of partnering with the community, the company launched its own Discord server after it introduced Flight Simulator in August. That community quickly dominated. It has nearly 60,000 members as of April 2021.
While Microsoft did announce a partnership with an air traffic control sim community, it wasn’t fsATC. Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network (VATSIM) got the nod. The community is known for being very serious and strict about its rules. “Beginners are scared away from VATSIM,” Bodeezl said, and are often kicked off for not complying with the rules. That results in some quitting before they really get a chance to see what ATC is all about, and because Microsoft’s own Discord dominates the community, Bodeezl says, it has become harder for the newbies to find communities that can support them.
Both fsATC and Downwind are still active and host flights regularly, with air traffic controllers still guiding the way. None of the founders are directly involved as moderators, including Kerelis—though he is still an occasional presence in fsATC. Bodeezl, who is a staff member in both communities, says he is working to rebrand fsATC, which is now known as Simverse. The community hasn’t left flight simulation behind entirely, but it is no longer the primary focus. Simverse is set up to be a community for all simulation-style games that put an emphasis on realism. A current favorite: iRacing, a racing simulator that replicates what it’s like to be behind the wheel in competitive motorsports. Meanwhile, Bodeezl has traded in digital planes for real ones. He recently took a job at an airline, though he didn’t want to disclose his role.
RedMugs and Salad have largely retired from the flight simulation community. Salad has left flight sims behind, saying the drama turned him off entirely. “It really hurt me a lot to lose such a big community that I put so much time, effort, and money into,” he said—though he’s recently revisited the old fsATC server and will voice chat with old members from time to time.
The legacy of what they made, short-lived though it may have been, lives on with the bustling Flight Simulator community. They helped to show that a franchise once thought stale and stagnant could find new life and new audiences. They also proved that when it comes to flying, too many pilots in the cockpit can make it hard to stick the landing.
