Steam calls Metro Exodus switch to Epic Store “unfair”

We always knew Epic Store was going to need some aggressive moves to make a dent at Steam’s dominance on the game distribution market. What we didn’t expect was for Epic Games to snatch the games from Steam literally after months of pre-orders.

According to the official Steam blog, the publisher of Metro Exodus has decided to make the game an Epic Store exclusive for a year and cancel the sales on Steam. Here is an exempt of the official statement:

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.

Deep Silver has clarified that every person who has preordered the game on Steam or bought a physical copy with a Steam code, will be able to download it through Valves’s service. All future updates and DLC will be also available and purchasable on both stores and show up simultaneously.

The “fairness” of the decision made by Deep Silver and 4A is hard to evaluate since Steam will still be keeping their 30% cut from pre-sales. On the other hand, Metro Exodus was laying on the Steam forefront for several months, building up the momentum for the release date. Now that it’s on another store, Steam is left without the lion’s share of the revenue that will come after the release, that is going to Epic Store with its 12% cut.