The other week a couple of people made a post about Zen not being consumer friendly which triggered a couple others to reply in Zen Studio defense so lets look at what Zen Studios have done just in the past eight-teen months.
I discovered Zen Studios in 2020 and according to those that have been playing the Pinball FX franchise long before then have stated purchased tables have always been transferred to the next version at no cost. This we can all agree is pro consumer but since around late summer 2021, Zen Studios have been making decisions that can be viewed as anti consumer.
Up until FX3, Zen was using a in-house engine which to the players works just fine. Yes there are bugs that have been fixed and bugs that still need to be fixed but overall everyone is fine with the engine being used. Unfortunately Zen Studios decided to change engines to Unreal Engine which would be fine if customers purchased tables carried over but Zen Studios decided not to do this. As you can imagine, huge backlash ensued and made it even worst was the announcement the new FX would be Epic Games exclusive for the first year BUT won’t state when that exclusive period started and/or end leaving all their Steam customers in the dark. With their entire PC customers being on Steam, agreeing to a Epic Games exclusive had to be the biggest insult to their Steam customers. If they had done just an ounce of research, they would have read stories by game developers that took Epic exclusive deal only to regret it in the end.
Zen Studios claims that switching engine to Unreal Engine, they would be able to offer Ray Tracing and HDR. Now I’m sure Ray Tracing and HDR is good for games like DOOM, HALO, and so on but pinball? Regarding HDR, from my research on this, it appears you need to have a display that supports this new technology and since many people still do not have 4K supported displays, it’s pretty safe to say that even fewer have HDR supported displays. Again, this is pinball we’re talking about here which already looks great in FX3.
Now we move on to the next negative thing Zen Studios did. They decided that the new FX would have in-game currency, no not 1:1 currency but a mobile style currency system where x amount of money will get you x amount of tickets. With this system one will always have left over tickets resulting in more money having to be spent. This is a popular predatory method of scamming money from gamers especially on mobile which have resulted in a lot of bad publicity, especially in Europe. It has almost the same amount of hatred as loot boxes and yet Zen Studios thought adding such payment system would be a good thing. Again this comes down to no research being done or they just didn’t care and wanted to scam as much money as possible from their customers.
One of the reasons given for the ticket system was so they could make purchases cross platform. They double even triple down on the in game currency being a must for buying tables only to then release Indiana Jones that could only be purchased outside of the game. This of course got Zen Studios labelled as liars. Also, any programmer knows that you can still have cross platform purchases with a simple login system. Many games have their own login system and Zen Studios could have come out with their own if they really wanted to allow cross buy but they want to remain adamant it could only be done with the predatory payment system. Thankfully, enough players voiced their disgust against the in-game payment system and it was removed from the new FX. One can still purchase in-game currency to buy cosmetics but tables are back to being purchased through the respected store front. Zen could have simply allowed in-game tables purchases with real money using such payment portals like PayPal but again it all comes back to Zen wanting that scam ticket system.
This post is getting long so allow me to bring it to an end. With Zen Studios;
- Not importing a customers already purchases tables,
- Turning their backs on cross buy,
- Wanting a predatory in-game payment system,
- Epic Games exclusive when all their customers are on Steam,
- Changing engine no one asked for,
- Refusing to state the exclusive start/end date,
- Lack of communication with customers which could have avoided the massive negativity Zen Studios has endured
Is Zen Studios pro or anti consumer?