The Epic Games Store has made a number of high profile exclusive signings, from The Division 2 to The Outer Worlds to Control. But not one of them has kicked up as much controversy as Metro Exodus, the reason for which was the circumstances surrounding its exclusivity. After already having been announced for Steam and even having been up for pre-order on the storefront, after the game signed on with Epic Games, it was pulled from Valve’s storefront, angering many.
Recently, Epic Games spoke about the issue, mentioning that they acknowledge the way things were handled with Metro Exodus were less than ideal, and that Epic would make sure to not dabble in similar circumstances again. Not long after that, however, upcoming sci-fi thriller Observation was declared as an Epic Games Store exclusive under similar circumstances, after it had already been on Steam.
When asked about this turnaround on Twitter, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney responded that following internal discussions, the company was still open to signing exclusivity deals with games regardless of their past commitments to Steam- basically doing a 180 on their earlier statement. Meanwhile, in another tweet, he mentioned that the decision to sign on with Epic in such situations rests with developers and publishers, and if they want to sign, Epic isn’t going to tell them “no”.
Recently, another high profile upcoming release declared timed exclusivity to the Epic Games Store on PC- Borderlands 3.
We've had a lot of discussions about this since GDC. Epic is open to continuing to sign funding / exclusivity deals with willing developers and publishers regardless of their previous plans or announcements around Steam.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 1, 2019
This prompted further discussions at Epic, leading to the realization that these calls must be up to developers and publishers, and Epic wouldn’t tell them “no” on account of existing statements made about Steam.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 1, 2019
