Not so long ago, Deep Silver has declared that Metro Exodus will be a timed Epic store exclusive and will not launch on Steam come next month. Even though the Steam pre-order will still be honored for the game and it’s DLC, Valve has termed the new exclusivity as “unfair”.
In a statement, Valve has responded to the news on the game’s Steam store page, which retells the content available for potential customers before adding, “We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period”.
Valve has further apologized to the Steam customer, “We apologized 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.”
Valve’s frustration is comprehensible, since not only is the game being removed from its distribution platform, but it’s also being sold at a much lesser price on the Epic Game Store. Customers in the US who buy Metro Exodus from Epic will pay $50, which is equal to a full $10 discount over the Steam price.
Despite the frustration, customers who pre-ordered the game from Valve are lucky and will still get access to the game and future DLC on Steam after the game is launched on February 15th. However, the sales for the new customers will be discontinued later today.
The price reduction clearly speaks clearly how Epic Game is luring developers to its platform. That only means one thing, Valves is taking 30% cut of all sales on Steam. On the other hand, as a new challenger, the Epic Games takes just 12% and that reduced revenue seems to correlate to Deep Silver’s reasons for lower the price on the Epic store.
“Epic’s generous revenue terms are a game changer that will allow publishers to invest more into content creation, or pass on saving to the players,” said Deep Silver CEO Klemens Kundratitiz in the company’s announcement on Monday. “By teaming up with Epic we will be able to invest more into the future of Metro and our ongoing partnership with serious developer 4A Games, to the benefit of our Metro fans.”
Deep Silver’s announcement has triggered THQ Nordic, the Austrian video game publisher that acquired Deep Silver parent company Koch Media last February, also tweeted about the decision to publish Metro Exodus on the Epic Store was “made entirely” by Koch. Since Koch is considered to be “a sister company,” which was the reason they declined to comment.
Nonetheless, the tweet further said that was “a timed Epic Store exclusive,” suggesting that it could eventually be available on Steam if Valve allowed it.
Deep Silver further affirmed that the purchase through third-party key seller like Humble Bundle will be honored too, even though the specifics are still not clear. Due to that confusion, Humble Bundle’s is not accepting new orders but still specifies that they need an account to access the game.
