Why does my project lose ENUM Friendly Names on Package?

The names are set to a string in blueprints from the ENUM via an “Enum to String” Node.

Those strings are then converted to text and passed into a button’s text via ‘bind’ in a widget.

In PIE the menu correctly displays the ENUM’s Friendly Name, but after package does not.

Friendly names are considered meta-data that is only loaded whenever the editor is started. Whenever the game is packaged, meta-data is discarded.

You can solve this by using a select on the Text pin and use the enum as option.

That is a ridiculous waste of time that needlessly adds extra steps to something that should be really simple.
But if that is the only way to do it then I guess I have to do it.

Im sure there is a good reason why meta data isn’t transferred to the packaged project, but I don’t know why there wouldn’t be a “MetaData to String” Node or something like that…