'Metro Exodus' will be an Epic Games Store exclusive for a year
Pre-orders on Steam will be honored but the game won't be on the platform until 2020.
PC gamers planning to explore the post-apocalyptic world of Metro Exodus will have to go through the Epic Games Store. Publisher Deep Silver announced today that the upcoming game will be available exclusively through the Epic Games Store at launch and will be pulled from Steam. The announcement is a major win for the Epic Games Store, which has been attempting to poach titles from its biggest competitor since launching just over a month ago.
The announcement of exclusivity will likely come as a bit of a surprise for gamers. Up until today, Metro Exodus was available to pre-order through Steam. Those purchases will still be honored and available through Steam, as will future DLC, but Metro Exodus will otherwise be dropped from the platform. The game can be made available through Steam and other digital storefronts starting February 14th, 2020, a full year after the game's initial release date. In a statement published on the Metro Exodus store page, Steam called the decision "unfair" and apologized to customers who were anticipating the game's release.
The Epic Games Store has been snatching away any title that it can from Steam in hopes of making a dent in the major game distributor's market share. Earlier this month, The Epic Games Store managed to entice Ubisoft to bring Division 2 to its platform, with future titles from the developer promised later this year. It also managed to net the final episodes of Telltale's The Walking Dead series after Telltale closed its doors.
