Metro Exodus will be exclusively released via the Epic Store on PC. The standard edition and the gold edition of the game are available for pre-purchase on the Epic Games website now.
“Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store,” reads a post on Exodus‘ Steam page. “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.”
There’s quite a bit to unpack here. First off, this news follows the recent announcement that Ubisoft will launch The Division 2 exclusively on Epic Game Store and are reportedly intending to release future Ubisoft games exclusively via that platform. Now, it seems they might have been just the first of several publishers who intend to skip Steam at launch.
What’s especially interesting in this instance, though, is that Valve has somewhat aggressively called out this late decision via their platform whereas they made little direct reference to the Ubisoft decision on Steam. That might have something to do with publisher Deep Silver stating that their decision to make this move at such a late date can be traced to Epic’s more generous revenue sharing model. Not only will the publisher and developer receive a larger portion of Metro‘s sales via Epic than they would if they released the game through Steam, but the difference is so great that they’ve even lowered the price of the game ($50 USD on Epic while the Steam version cost $59.99).
While other studios have referenced Epic’s more generous revenue sharing structure when explaining their decision to skip Steam, Deep Silver going so far as to lower the price of the game (at least in the U.S.) really shows just how big that difference is. While Deep Silver states that this exclusive agreement will only last for about one year, we wonder how much longer Valve can hold out even as some of their own games falter.
As for Metro Exodus, we recently had the chance to play the upcoming sequel and walked away rather impressed with what it brings to the franchise while retaining the core elements that make the Metro series so great in the first place.
As we inch closer to that February 15th release date, we’ll be sure to keep you furnished with updates.