Monday, January 28th 2019
Metro Exodus Ditches Steam for Epic Games Store as Timed Exclusive
Metro Exodus is an upcoming post-apocalyptic first-person shooter that could be a trilogy finale. Just weeks ahead of its launch on the PC platform, 4A Games made a groundbreaking announcement: that the game will not be available to order on Steam, at least from tomorrow through Feb 14, 2020, and that its PC version will be an Epic Games Store timed exclusive. The game will launch at USD $49.99 in North America, and 59.95€ in the EU.
Pre-order sales of the game have stopped on Steam, however, those who bought the pre-order on Steam have the option of either receiving the game upon launch, or canceling their pre-order for a full refund. Those who choose to stick to Steam will get their game as usual, including update patches, and support on Steam Community. Epic Games Store is vacuuming game studios in droves due to a favorable revenue sharing deal compared to Steam, when lets developers keep 88 percent of the sales.
Source:
Polygon
Pre-order sales of the game have stopped on Steam, however, those who bought the pre-order on Steam have the option of either receiving the game upon launch, or canceling their pre-order for a full refund. Those who choose to stick to Steam will get their game as usual, including update patches, and support on Steam Community. Epic Games Store is vacuuming game studios in droves due to a favorable revenue sharing deal compared to Steam, when lets developers keep 88 percent of the sales.
153 Comments on Metro Exodus Ditches Steam for Epic Games Store as Timed Exclusive
I would prefer to have my games in one client, but don't really care all that much if they are in 2 or 3. Definitely not enough to boycott a good game altogether just out of spite.
Steam's commission is flat 30%, which includes lots of stuff including hosting, advertising, sales assistance and campaign optimisation, various technical features not available elsewhere (Proton, flexible controller support), post-sales revenue (trading cards, in-game items etc), community features etc.
Oh... and 10-times bigger exposure, if that's of any importance :D It's not out of spite, it's common sense. If a developer/publisher company wants to be an asshole and change their mind about availability mere 3 weeks before release - I won't be going out of my way just to give them money. If 4A wants to take a risk - I'm not gonna be a part of it at my own expense. If I skip Exodus - nothing bad is going to happen. I've survived without ME: Andromeda, never regretted not going to Origin for Crysis 3, not concerned with what's going on with Origin, and definitely don't miss that short time I spent with Bethesda Launcher.
Plus, it smells just as bad as pre-orders: with preorders you are committed to a game without knowing whether it's shit or not, and with buying a game on a new platform you are getting committed to this platform without a guarantee that it won't disappear next month/year due to lack of content publishers or content consumers.
PC Gamers are not by definition 'Steam users'. They have an account there, yes, which makes sense because the store has steadily built to a near-monopoly. But they also have accounts elsewhere, for example with literally every publisher they buy games from and log in for, for example. Even you have that, and all Steam is, is a way to save you one or two extra clicks to get you where you want to be - ingame.
Also, I am lost as to how you feel you 'lose' anything by having multiple launchers and/or libraries at stores. Not to mention the fact that you can still put game shortcuts anywhere you want regardless of the store they're linked to. I'm also wondering why you think Steam has 'reach' as in: they can bring the game to thousands of customers. They don't. Steam only advertises on its own platform and the vast majority barely browses the store, and many people disable the popups Steam gives you pre- and post-game launch. There's a good chance a large audience will never see a game within/through Steam, but elsewhere in marketing and buys a Steam key somewhere, because there aren't any other kinds of keys available. That's what I do...
Care to elaborate? I'm honestly curious about the thought process here.
Last, the cost/benefit aspect for developers and publishers - a 30% cut for a store that is digital is quite a lot, still. Half the sale price for a physical store was also, always essentially too much. I think you misunderstand how pricing really works under the hood... That 30% cut on a game sale price can go two ways: 1. cut into the development budget which literally means you get less game because Steam wants its cut, or 2. increase the sale price of games. Every expense will in the end always land in the customers' lap. Why would you support that, feeding the middle man that is never going to bring you any game at all? (Not even Half life 3... :D)
This is not competition, this is BS, not to mention I've lost all respect for Epic after they completely halted any and all development on the crowdsourced UT title, disregarding years of work by so many people and telling so many lies in the process.
All because they hit the underage jackpot with Fortnite, which is what we owe this Epic store nonsense to also for that matter.
I will not be playing the exclusives game on the PC front, much like I refuse to do so about console titles.
Metro Exodus will be purchased from the CPY store, thank you very much lol
Hell, if we're super duper lucky then maybe Epic/Deep Silver may realise that the negative press they're getting from all this is costing them much more than losing sales to Steam would have done and remove their exclusivity lock. However that too is very unlikely as the whole reason they went for exclusivity is because they knew that being cheaper than steam wouldn't be enough to take sales from steam hence why they went the anti-consumer route in the first place.
There are a number of games on Steam that will run straight from the .exe without Steam open. Divinity Original Sin 1&2 are an example.
But most developers/publishers choose to integrate with Steam as a form of DRM. Yes I think this is sort of a fundamental flaw with the games space in general. No games retailer is actually a retailer, they are a marketplace. The publishers set the prices, control the keys, etc.
It's not like a retailer where say Steam goes to Deep Silver and says I want 20,000 keys to sell on Steam what price will give you give me let's negotiate. The publisher actively controls their space on Steam including the price.
I just don't know that there's a way to fundamentally realign the industry away from this. Since publishers got this control with the digital distribution boom, they'll never want to give that up.
Yet, you seem to think those childish actions merit a “hi, how are you? Glad to have you join the conversation!”?
Get back on topic.
Thank You.
according to this article Tencent is among the largest internet companies in the world.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-internet.html