X-Plane: Digital Download or Steam?

[der bastler]

You can purchase X-Plane as a Digital Download from x-plane.com or via Steam.

What is the difference (pro/con) and what way to choose?

Costs are more or less the same.
_________________
Tempus fugit.
@frank@troet.cafe

[lekto]

Pros not in any particular order:
Steam keeps saves in the cloud and syncs them between machines.
It keeps your games updated.
It can find and redownload damaged files.
You can remotely play games over LAN, for example, if you have a powerful PC and a weaker laptop.
It has built-in Proton, which is a fork of Wine that works on Steam out-of-the-box and can be used for games outside of Steam (I heard that but have not tested it yet).
There are lots of discounts on games, most of them (if I remember it correctly) at the beginning of every season.
You can buy cheap games on Humble Bundle, and they give you nearly always a key for Steam.
You can refund games if you don't like them, if you have them for less than two weeks and played them for less than two hours.
You can share games with friends, but they can only play them if you are offline.

Con:
Installing it in Gentoo is pain in the ass (it is 32-bit only, and it has its own updater), so grab the Flatpak version.

[spica]

I bought directly on Laminar's website. Personally, I am not interested in all those "consolidated lists of games in a single place" – games, which I maybe play one time, put on a shelf and never take it back. I think, the only benefit of Steam is Proton, but XPlane runs natively in Linux, and, since Proton is not needed for native Linux games, and if a user runs 1-2 native linux games then their app is just an ads spreader requiring a good amount of user's efforts to maintain it. Also, if a game is bought on developer's website, they do not need to pay Steam for a new customer, if that matters.

[Clad in Sky]

[der bastler]