Metro Exodus’ Epic Store exclusivity felt wrong for Epic Games

As you might recall, Metro Exodus was not only scheduled to release on PC via Steam – but had also been available for pre-orders for quite some time before the huge shift towards Epic Store happened. It was an unexpected move, to say the least, and no one could believe it was real.

The situation caused a lot of frustration and even hate towards Epic, and now it turns out that the company is not happy with the way it all went either. Speaking at GDC, the head of Epic Games Store – Steve Allison – was particularly asked about the story with Metro’ exodus (pun intended) from Steam. It turns out that the exclusivity in question felt wrong for the store owners, and Allison shared his thoughts claiming that the company will never do the same move again. The deal between Deep Silver and Epic didn’t happen in the course of a single day though; both sides had been negotiating for a few months, which eventually resulted in a rushed transition to Epic Store. Allison also added that the chain of exclusivity deals is going to end – sooner or later. That said, Epic has recently secured another batch of high-profile titles for its store – including once PlayStation-exclusive games by Quantic Dream.

The whole idea of moving to Epic Store is understandable considering a significantly lower cut of revenue taken by the owner of the digital store – 12% in Epic Store against 30% in Steam. Still, the overall situation did feel like an unfair move. We should mention that the publisher Deep Silver nonetheless delivered the pre-ordered copies of Metro Exodus to the Steam users as expected.