Steam. I've been with Steam for many years and I have never had any issues with updates or downloads except those caused by my own incompetence or that of my ISP.

 

2 hours ago, Max Kraus said:

The only thing I don;t like about Steam is because you purchase credits (that's fine) but I cannot for the life of me find any receipts of what I have purchased with the credits, just a history list of credit amounts. Unless someone can point out where I am missing ?? I'm sure it has to be me.

Go to your Steam user 'Account'.  You will see a link to your purchase history. This will list all your purchases. Click on the purchase you want to analyse and it will give you the price and tax paid. From there you can request a refund. 

 

Cheers

Terry

If I was buying now I’d probably go with Steam as I’ve had my share of headaches with the X Box app and windows updates that cause the sim to hang on startup. However I have lots of marketplace purchases that I’d lose, so MS it is. 

Steam

3 hours ago, bennyboy75 said:

If I was buying now I’d probably go with Steam as I’ve had my share of headaches with the X Box app and windows updates that cause the sim to hang on startup. However I have lots of marketplace purchases that I’d lose, so MS it is. 

Why would you lose your MS Marketplace purchases? Surely they could be reinstalled in MSFS 2024?

5 hours ago, Lord Farringdon said:

Go to your Steam user 'Account'.  You will see a link to your purchase history. This will list all your purchases. Click on the purchase you want to analyse and it will give you the price and tax paid. From there you can request a refund. 

 

Cheers

Terry

That's what I'm talking about - all you see is a transaction ID and how many credits you purchased. Nothing about the actual product you bought.

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

Why would you lose your MS Marketplace purchases? Surely they could be reinstalled in MSFS 2024?

Apparently not. If you switch from MS store to Steam or vice versa, anything you purchased from the former is lost. It’s very annoying. 

1 hour ago, Max Kraus said:

That's what I'm talking about - all you see is a transaction ID and how many credits you purchased. Nothing about the actual product you bought.

Ah, I see what you mean. So you can get a receipt for the credits you bought, but no receipt is available for the (shall we say) the airport you bought.

Perhaps this is to do with in-game purchasing. For example, if I buy something directly from Steam (not while I'm in any game), the purchase gives me a receipt and details the item I just bought, which would usually be a titled game. However, if I am in a game, such as MSFS, and I am buying downloadable content (DLC), then I can only do this with Steam credits. I therefore have to purchase Steam credits and may decide to buy just sufficient for the DLC I want, or to top up my wallet for future purchasing of in game DLC  in MSFS or any other game title for that matter.

Accordingly, it is the initial purchase of the selected quantity of credits which is the receiptable transaction (just like buying chips at the casino). What you do with these credits (chips) is your business and Steam doesn't see any need to give you a receipt for the part or full use of these credits since they are tokens, vouchers or even a foreign currency transaction which you have already fully paid for and been given a receipt for. You can use them at will.  I suspect Steam has no idea what DLC you exchanged for these credits and so only lists the name of the title you were in-game with when you used them. A bit like a credit card company that gives you a $1000 credit and on your monthly invoice shows you where you expended some of the credit and the amount you paid, but has no idea what you actually bought.

Does that make any sense? 

Cheers

Terry

 

 

 

Edited September 22, 20241 yr by Lord Farringdon

I went with the MS store again. I intended to purchase MSFS 2024 through Steam, but having purchased addons in the MS store and the remarks by some in these forums I might loose these after a Steam purchase (still have not seen an official link confirming this), convinced me to go MS store again. Although I prefer Steam I find the Xbox app very intuitive as well. I never had issues upgrading MSFS 2020. Bring on MSFS 2024!

I originally had the MS Store version.  I didn't have any problems for the first year, but then MSFS wouldn't open.  I was without MSFS for three days as I tried to work out what the problem was.  On another occasion I couldn't get it to load, another day without the sim.  the update process could be a pain also.

I took the decision to buy the Steam Version.  Of course this meant I didn't have access to several of my addon products.  However, the steam version is no hassle at all to own.  Updates are automatically downloaded and joining/leaving betas is a single click.

Steam all the way for me.

I'm glad I read this thread. I was going to switch to Steam but if I lose my MS Store purchases I guess that's now not going to happen.

Buy from now in your preferred online addon stores out Steam and MS marketplaces, problem solved.

Steam, because all my Marketplace purchases were done there.

Not a fan of Steam (not necessarily for any rational reasons, I just don't like the whole experience) so I'll stick wth the Store. Easy enough to configure the installation to go where I want it and the update issues seem to have been ironed out by now.

Plus, I have many dozens of marketplace addons already.

Steam. People were warned about the problems with the store version before 2020 even released and sure enough, we had numerous threads over the years with all the issues. Not being able to use Reshade for a looong time, until they found some wonky workaround that people could barely get working, issues with authentication and starting the sim because of how it's all encrypted and locked behind an account with MS Store content. Feel like I've read the first hundreds of complaints and issues people had with the Store version.

Steam version is straight forward, no nonense, non-encrypted, easy to use, access to all of Steam's overlay features much more easily. It's a no brainer.