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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Narc0lep5y" data-source="post: 296141" data-attributes="member: 5223">It's not about the account or another store front.  It's not even some weird loyalty to Steam. Although there are those who feel that way too.  Steam just has quality of life features whereas EGS is a barebones game sales front.  One huge feature has a huge impact to me and anyone who has multiple PC's (like a pincab and a gaming PC).  I use a family account on Steam to play on multiple machines, my pinball cabinet and gaming PC.  I have another Steam account just for the pincab and install titles via family sharing and as long as I'm not playing it at the same time on my main gaming PC the library is shared across both accounts.  It works for FX3, FX2, Black Flaggers or any other Steam title.   Not for non steam titles that you just add to the front end though.  Family sharing is not on Epic, so I'd need to either log in on my Epic account back and forth on both machines and undergo the 2 factor authorization back and forth too, or create another account just for that machine which means i couldn't play on my main gaming machine without being stuck in the same loop or buy it twice.  Steam also has an offline mode for its front end (better for pincab) and Epic supposedly has a kind of unofficial work around for offline, but I've read that it doesn't do well with DLC and that's kind of a huge issue on a product where DLC is such a large portion of the product.   The other quality of life features missing from the EGS, aren't huge for FX, unless they decide to put a table editor in it, then we'll really miss the Steam Workshop.  Other things like no shopping cart, no gift cards, no buying a second copy of a game to gift to a friend, aren't really key for FX but they contribute to the whole store front preference evaluation what you want to support as a consumer.    The Epic store was also the victim of a data breach in late 2018, and unlike retailers like Best Buy or Target or publishers like Sony, as far as I know, there was no credit monitoring service offered as a result.  Again personal preference, but i wouldn't store any payment information with them.  If i had to i think I'd use a gift card, but they don't have those, so (as I've now learned) PayPal is the best option. There's a whole level of how the good-for-publishers-bad-for-consumer model works, but I just don't have it in me to type it up right now. I've got a book already going here. It's a personal preference like anything though and it's not the only reason i haven't bought from EGS, but it's part of it.  They all add up. But the direct game play impact of EGS vs Steam affects everyone.  Those I will go over.Epic does not have the same installed base of users as Steam.  It's growing because of these deals but mostly because of Fortnite and free giveaways.  Steam currently has about double the number of active users, but they are also playing multiple games and game genres.    Only 37% of the total sales on Epic are to third parties.  Meaning over 60% of those users are playing/buying Fortnite (or Shadow Complex but really just Fortnite).   When you've got a feature like Pinball Royale or enhanced social features, those are heavily dependent on players actually playing.  We should all want the maximum number of users on Steam, consoles and Epic all playing to keep queues speedy and not be a graveyard experience.  Do we think the much younger Fortnite crowd is going to stop playing Fortnite to play Pinball FX or Pinball Royale?  If not, that means to expand the player base on FX, the user experience will rely heavily on pulling as many of the Steam users over to Epic (it matter less from a financial perspective for the publisher, because Zen is already getting their money whether it sells or not and that's one of the problems with this exclusive model thing). Based on the strong feelings already out there, we know that's already an uphill battle and there's a percentage (including me) that just wont do it.  And that keeps the player base lower.  Maybe you can get some pincab VPX users to jump over with Unreal Engine.  But without something significantly bigger and better than the cabinet options in FX3, they're not going to jump right in either.  And if the player base isn't there at launch will they stick around for a year until the Steam launch?  With such a DLC heavy game, even if you treat it as a stop gap to play until Steam gets it, will you be able to move those table packs you bought back to Steam?  I'd assume no, but let Zen answer that one.  But either way, a year from now, users will be splintered across both ecosystems with neither holding enough which weakens the whole product.  Pinball is way too niche to segregate the market like this.  Oh and these are just the issues with  the Epic store, I've said nothing about how the number of users who are upset over the re-buying of tables will impact the player base too and that extends to all of the platforms.  Or how even if everything is multi platform, the consoles don't have the same installed base either because PS5 and Xbox haven't sold enough yet and they aren't building it for the more mature PS4 and Xbox One platforms.  I'm actually pretty sympathetic to charging for re-mastered tables to a degree, I just think the Zen originals aren't worth buying, much less re-buying and physics wont matter there anyway.  I think Zen will find that out too.  They've said that it's the number one requested feature, but I think the people making the requests are just wanting to actually get value out of the tables they already own.  And then there's stuff like <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/the-epic-games-stores-could-be-draining-your-gaming-laptops-battery-life/" target="_blank">This</a></blockquote>

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