Iron's Heatblur post reminded me of some inside baseball I wanted to comment on.
I think ED's use of 3rd party vendors is inspired strategy. It can occasionally blow up on the like the WWII Normandy debacle, but in the whole has been a game changer for ED.
I don't know if ED helps fund any of those efforts. I doubt it. What ED does, is approve the project and give them technical assistance and guarantees that while they are actively working the project another vendor won't jump in and duplicate their effort. Then they give it ED blessing and leverage their marketing reach to give it an exposure it would have been hard for Heatblur to pay for. In return, the vendors probably pays a licensing fee and provide content for ED's ecosystem which generates more potential customers for their in-house projects. With a successful vendor like Heatblur, the vendor can concentrate on the value add content built on top of the ED foundation without having to write the whole sim from scratch and they piggy back on ED reputation. A virtuous circle. I guess in a business sense that is a classic franchise model, not in just "franchise" in the use of the term as series of related products. Less like the IL2 "franchise" but more like a McDonalds "franchise" with independent operator\owners.
In the mean time the vendor takes the financial risk and has shoulders the burden of the the team costs and most of the risk. Those are workers ED doesn't have to hire or employ so they are not a liability on their books yet provide them benefit.
ED provides the base simulation engine and API and umbrella brand and marketing leverage.
I don't think IL2 does that, do they? I guess X-plane and MSFS might be examples of that model.
An interesting strategic choice. In effect, a mutual force multiplier for both vendor and parent sim. First time I've seen that in a combat sim.