Zen Studios did not have to delist the game. But the point is that it doesn't have to be this way. I know this seems like a trivial thing to complain about. There are a few tables I really miss from FX and FX2. I really don't see the point in defending them on this.Īnd yes, it does suck to lose the things you enjoy. People are allowed to call out any companies that do this, especially for games that can be played offline like Pinball FX2. That might be legal but it doesn't make it right. Companies can then delist a game - denying access to paying customers and then ignore their complaints. Digital games can be really convenient in some ways but their terms and conditions are made to be very limiting. It's only now with digital licenses that we don't really own anything.
You owned a physical disc or cartridge, and that means you owned that game forever. It wasn't that long ago when physical games were the norm. Maybe the reason you are so butt hurt is because your head is firmly lodged up it.Īll video games come and go with time. You act as if it’s a complete anomaly for a game to get remastered and charged for again. PinFX is not just a simple retread of FX3, as their are going to be many things added. So lemme guess, when Naughty Dog came out with the Nathan Drake collection, porting Uncharted 1-3 from the PS3 to the PS4, they should have just given it to those of us that had previously purchased? I mean all they did was a graphics enhancement and an update to controls for the first one, easy stuff, right? And now that they are bringing the entire collection over to the PS5 and PC, that should be given to us too? I mean it surely only took them minimal man hours and time to do so, eh? I mean, they too killed all patches and online multiplayer servers for the PS3 editions.Īs much as you want to claim corporate greed, Zen has been reinvesting in itself, doubling the size of its pinball division so they can bring even more to their players. For someone claiming to have been in the games industry for ten years, you seem to have a pretty shallow understanding of the business side of things and what is necessary to keep a game relevant to the demands of today’s players. Steam is also not abandoned, it’s just gonna be a year behind. The big difference is that ALL tables will be using the Williams Pro physics, something none of the Zen originals had before.įX3 is not abandoned, all your purchases will still be playable. The physics engine is not changing, Zen is bringing what they have developed in FX3 into PinFX. This is something FarSight failed to do with The Pinball Arcade and was a reason it became bug riddled. They have squeezed as much as they could out of it, but for the sake of the future of the game, it made sense to switch engines and go with one from an engine developer like Unreal or Unity. Zen has stated they are a games software developer, not a game engine developer. And I suspect these practices will spill over to every product in your offering, not just Pinball FX.They’ve been using the same game engine since 2009, the PX engine, that they developed themselves. This is a great opportunity to show that the company is at least trying to care for its customers.įor customers like me, buying content from Zen is getting increasingly harder to self-justify, and you'll eventually end up with both "new customers" (as I was at the time of Pinball FX3 being the "latest" one) and "die hard" ones, but will be missing out on what I suspect is the biggest portion of your customer base. Zen's business practices with regards to customer "ownership" of content have been far from ideal up until now, costing the company a (well deserved, in my humble opinion) great deal of bad PR and customer apathy. My humble suggestion as a customer that purchased every table on Pinball FX3 with the exception of Indiana Jones, and being gobsmacked at the unwillingness on the part of Zen to "carry over"/transfer those purchases to the newer engine/platform is this: please do offer a heavy discount on previously purchased tables, as the "copyright"/royalties costs should have already been (at least partially) accounted for, and also consider that people can always play those (previously purchased) tables on Pinball FX3 - why would anyone not having excessive disposable/spare income choose to re-buy those tables at full price?