Can anyone share their experience with Steam and Microsoft Store and which one is more preferred or popular? I bought it from Microsoft Store and don't have much knowledge on this topic. If anyone has switched between the two, please explain which one you find better and why. Thank you.

If you bought it from the store, you are all set.

Why second guess yourself?

It is the same product... just different store..

Edited May 5, 20233 yr by Bert Pieke

12 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Why second guess yourself?

It is the same product... just different store..

Thank you for your comment, however, this is not pertaining to me. Someone has mentioned specific changes to certain items or file structures.

Store is great have had no issues since launch. 

I have store version. No issues whatsoever.

Store, no issues at all. 

Best bet is  to purchase  from  where  you  got msfs  from

2 hours ago, LRBS said:

Thank you for your comment, however, this is not pertaining to me. Someone has mentioned specific changes to certain items or file structures.

I got mine from the Store, and have recently helped someone change from Steam to the Store install, because Steam routines were running in the background and interfering with MSFS performance..

So, tell us what your actual concern is and maybe someone can help you out.. 😉

There were some glitches specific to the MS store early on but nothing I am aware of lately.

Biggest issue with Steam I have heard is many people seem to need to pre-load their steam wallet with cash before making a marketplace purchase which i smore an annoyance than a gamebreaker.

There are some reports of one-second stutter due to some steamapps running in the background. Not everyone is affected, for me it would be reason enough, NOT to get the Steam variant. 

Store works great. Since I am not interested in any other games, Steam would be useless...

5 hours ago, LRBS said:

Thank you for your comment, however, this is not pertaining to me. Someone has mentioned specific changes to certain items or file structures.

The main difference between the Microsoft Store versus Steam was within the first year of MSFS's release.  People often had trouble getting the updates for patches from the Microsoft Store. To make it more complicated, for one patch, MSFS simply wouldn't update unless you had installed the XBox app in Windows, for people with the Microsoft Store version. Steam users never had problems updating MSFS.  However, over the last year, from 2022 to 2023, there have been few reports of issues getting updates in the Microsoft Store.

Another issue I read of Steam users is that if you "verify" the game files for MSFS, Steam would do an entire reinstall of MSFS.  I don't own MSFS on Steam so I can't comment on this exactly. But you can search this issue with Steam.

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

The main difference between the Microsoft Store versus Steam was within the first year of MSFS's release.  People often had trouble getting the updates for patches from the Microsoft Store. To make it more complicated, for one patch, MSFS simply wouldn't update unless you had installed the XBox app in Windows, for people with the Microsoft Store version. Steam users never had problems updating MSFS.  However, over the last year, from 2022 to 2023, there have been few reports of issues getting updates in the Microsoft Store.

Another issue I read of Steam users is that if you "verify" the game files for MSFS, Steam would do an entire reinstall of MSFS.  I don't own MSFS on Steam so I can't comment on this exactly. But you can search this issue with Steam.

I was worried when I started reading that topic, until I reached your comment there. Thanks.

The MS Store version of MSFS was very problematic until a few months ago, and it was only that version that had problems. In fact, most people recommended new users to get the Steam version of MSFS instead of the Store version, because there were just too much install or update issues with the Store version, and these problems never occurred with the Steam version. Nowadays these problems seem to have disappeared, fortunately. I hope it stays this way for the MS Store MSFS users, and I feel very sorry for the three years of misery many of you had to go through.

The Steam version has only one issue (still valid today): if you trigger the "verify files" feature in Steam, it will wipe out your simulator files completely, forcing you to reinstall. But that only happens if you mistakenly trigger that feature. The MS Store version however, has been know for magically deleting all of your sim files magically, for no reasons 🙂

Now, I don't recommend switching from one version to the other. It's only asking for more troubles.

Edited May 5, 20233 yr by Daube

I use Steam and never had any of the problems others have regularly after updates (all settings deleted, neverending downloads etc.). I attributed this to the MS Store and the different folder structure, but could be that I‘m just a lucky guy.

I never had real issues that were connected to the MS store version which is what I have. There were some minor inconveniences but these where solved almost a year ago.