Much like other big name games before it, Metro Exodus is going Epic Games Store exclusive for its PC version. However, in the past, Valve has been extremely silent on the aggressive poaching and inroads from Epic Games. Perhaps they have felt a dignified silence suits them better, or they have not felt the Epic Game Store to be a threat.
Whatever it was has changed, however. Speaking today in response to the Metro Exodus announcement, Valve called out the decision to make the game exclusive to the Epic Game Store “unfair to customers” in a message that they left on the game’s store page on Steam.
“Later today, sales of Metro Exodus will be discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store,” the message says. “The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.
“We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.”
I do understand Valve’s frustration here. While I am all for more competition in the PC gaming space, I think that making games that were already announced as coming to a platform exclusive to a different one is a bit underhanded. I get that Epic wants to be aggressive, but I feel like they could do a better job by doing so with games that haven’t already been confirmed for Steam (like they did with Hades), or with their own games, to attract people to their launcher. Right now, they’re being a bit unfair to customers, as Valve says.