The drama surrounding Metro Exodus continues unabated. Deep Silver which has ownership over the IP, was the one that decided to pull Metro Exodus from Steam in favor of a 1-year timed exclusivity deal on the Epic Games Store. If you've been following the drama thus far this is all public information. Furthermore, it was speculated that this move was made at the very last minute considering other retailers were originally advertising preorders as being Steam keys for quite some time right up until the news of the digital platform switch broke. Lending more credence to the fact this was a disruptive switch at the last minute is the physical packaging which was not altered for the game's launch and instead has a sticker covering the Steam logo. Truly for such an outstanding game, the mess of its launch should be remembered as a great example of how not to release a game.

"Metro Exodus" is the week's big AAA PC launch, and the latest entry to the post-apocalyptic horror-survival shooter franchise by 4A Games. The Ukrainian studio recently pulled the game from Steam and made it an exclusive with rival DRM platform Epic Games, in pursuit of a higher revenue-share. This invited inexplicable hatred from Steam users, who appear to have review-bombed the game on review ratings aggregator Metacritic.

Metacritic presents averages of reviews by media publications and user-reviews side-by-side. This is vital as it helps uninformed or undecided gamers know if a game is overrated by the media. In case of "Exodus," Much of the 0-rated user-reviews include lines that criticize the game's non-availability on Steam or its withdrawal from the platform. The Metacritic review-bombing is the latest episode in a long saga of animosity between Steam users and "Exodus" developer 4A Games. 4A Games did initially solicit pre-orders for the game on Steam, and abruptly stopped its sales late-January. Those who had pre-ordered would continue to receive the game and its updates. 4A muddied the waters further by responding to initial criticism from Steam users by threatening to desert the PC platform as a whole, inviting more bile from some really angry gamers. The game received "generally positive" reviews from professional game reviewers.

For those who got lucky enough to pre-order Metro Exodus on Steam before its defection to the Epic Games store are now able to pre-load the title in preparation for its launch. It will require 51 GB of storage space, so if your connection is a bit slower, you'll be waiting a while for it to download, which means the Steam pre-load period quite beneficial. For those that bought the title elsewhere and have to go through the Epic Game store, you will have to wait for the official launch since the platform does not currently support preloading of soon to be released games. This will likely make those with slower connections a bit irked since it means they will be waiting even longer to play the title come release day.

The fact Metro Exodus was pulled from Steam but can still be preloaded on the platform, while the Epic Game store will force users to wait will likely just add to the drama and controversy. However, if you step away for a moment and focus on the game itself one thing remains breathtakingly clear, the game is quite astonishing in regards to the graphics, even with RTX disabled. You can take a closer look for yourself in our performance analysis of Metro Exodus.

Epic Games wants a slice of next-generation NVIDIA GameWorks titles that are bound to leverage the RTX feature-set of its hardware. The latest version of Unreal Engine 4, released as a preview-build, comes with a host of real-time ray-tracing features. In its change-log for Unreal Engine 4.22 Preview, Epic describes its real-time ray-tracing feature to be a "low level layer on top of UE DirectX 12 that provides support for DXR and allows creating and using ray tracing shaders (ray generation shaders, hit shaders, etc) to add ray tracing effects."

The hardware being reference here are the RT cores found in NVIDIA's "Turing RTX" GPUs. At the high-level, Unreal Engine 4 will support close to two dozen features that leverage DXR, including a denoiser for shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion; rectangular area lights, soft shadows, ray-traced reflections and AO, real-time global illumination, translucency, triangular meshes, and path-tracing. We could see Unreal Engine 4.22 get "stable" towards the end of 2019, to enable DXR-ready games of 2020.

When Steam hit critical mass in the mid 2000s, digital distribution of games was close to non-existent, Internet speeds were too low to transmit 8-10 GB games that would ship in DVDs, and game patching was a mess. Steam solved many of these problems by offering distribution, DRM, aftersales support (automatic updates), and even multiplayer services across its network. Steam didn't become popular on its own, though. Valve Software was mainly a game developer, and it marketed Steam by making its AAA smash-hits "Half Life 2" (and its episodes), "Counter Strike," and "Left 4 Dead," exclusive to the DRM platform. Even if you bought those games on DVDs, they would have to be installed and supported through a Steam account. Those games served as tech-demonstrators for Steam, and how efficient an all-encompassing DRM platform can work.

Steam maintained its dominance for a good 8-odd years until big game publishers such as EA and Ubisoft wised up to the concept of multi-brand distribution platforms Steam mastered. Steam operates on a revenue-sharing model. For every Dollar spent on a game, a percentage of the money is retained by Steam toward its services. EA and Ubisoft figured it wasn't rocket-science to copy Steam, and came up with their own platforms, EA Origin, and Ubisoft UPlay, both of which are multi-brand. They figured their capital-expenditure toward running these platforms was less than what they'd pay Steam at scale. EA restricted all its titles to Origin, while Ubisoft made some of its games available on Steam, even though UPlay would remain a concentric DRM layer to those games. Then something changed in 2018.

We reported yesterday how Metro Exodus unceremoniously left Steam for a year-long exclusivity deal on the Epic Game store, one of many steps that Epic and Tencent are taking to challenge the Goliath of PC gaming storefronts itself. Valve was quick in putting out a rare statement yesterday, which has been updated since to reflect the status of the game on Steam, and it can be seen below verbatim, with THQ Nordic's take on this matter past the break.

Notice: Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store. The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam. 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.

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.

The Independent has conducted an investigative report into the underwold's usage of Fortnite as a venue for money laundering. This likely won't come as a surprise - Fortnite has pretty lax acquisition restrictions for its in-game content and V-bucks, and the world's most popular multiplayer game moves millions of players through its servers daily. with such a deep pool of likely buyers for anything Fortnite at under Fortnite-store pricing, the stage is set for an almost untraceable money laundering scheme.

The Epic Games Store with its aggressive developer earnings program is drilling away at Steam's already-installed hegemony as the PC gaming platform of choice. A mere 12% royalty for the storefront means much more money goes back to the developers, and the more copies are sold of a given game, the bigger the profit will become. This is why some games have already even left Steam's shores to find a home on the Epic Games Store, and now, a AAA title in The Division 2 will be skipping Steam entirely. With launches on Ubisoft's own store and an 88% cut on the Epic store, Ubisoft will be looking to maximize their profits.

That part of the story is done; Ubisoft has also outed the system requirements for the PC version of The Division 2, which, for a minimum of 30 FPS at 1080p, will require either an AMD FX-6350 or Intel Core I5-2500K CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 2 GB of video RAM on an AMD Radeon R9 270 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 670.

The launch of the new Epic Games store for the PC has created many an aftershock in the gaming industry, including Steam updating their revenue share model, but the games press and media alike were quick to discuss implications more so for the equally new Discord store that understandably is more in line as far as breaking into the market goes, and impact from competition accordingly. In a series of moves that no doubt pleases game developers and publishers alike, Discord announced that they are going to offer a 90/10 revenue distribution with 90% in favor of developers- an increase over the industry leading "up to 88%" from Epic Games until then.

There is a small catch in that Discord is allowing developers to self-publish the games if they so desire, which in turn is how they will get that 90% revenue share, so it remains to be seen how user friendly that process is. Discord in their blog post made a big point about how it does not cost 30% to distribute games in 2018, a move that will no doubt be examined throughout not only the gaming industry but every single online app distribution platform where a 70/30 split is the current industry standard. As long as this move enables the store to break even and churn out a profit, we would like to see more of this happening to where game developers get more money and do not feel compelled to work ridiculously long hours.

Epic Games has been pulling a few major moves in the PC gaming market lately, none bigger than creating their own game store and following up with shifting over some of their games from Steam. The company promises a more lucrative profit distribution share to developers (to which Valve had preemptively countered slightly with their own Steam revenue update), and that did help get some game developers and publishers on board, including Supergiant with their new games Hades.

To appease the cautious PC audience thus far, Epic Games has decided to begin with some free games for account holders. As of the time of this post, the excellent aquatic survival game Subnautica is up for grabs. The game was somewhat of a sleeper hit this year, and well worth the free price of admission for anyone interested. The game is available through December 27, after which Epic Games will offer Super Meat Boy for free the following two weeks.

Epic Games is moving its entire collection of digitally-sold games away from Steam, and on to its own new store+DRM platform rivaling Steam, Origin, and UPlay. The new Epic Games Store plans not only to sell games published by Epic, but also other third-party publishers, to whom Epic is promising an 88% revenue share (keeping a 12% thin margin for handing DRM, unlimited downloads, and update patch distribution). For comparison, Steam rakes in a 30% margin. Epic is offering additional incentives to third-party game studios who use Unreal Engine. Epic Games titles are being pulled out from Steam store. The move does not affect people who already own Epic titles on Steam, as future re-installs and patch updates will continue.

No the title is not a typo, AMD has today released their Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.12.1.1 beta drivers. This release is essentially the same as the previous 18.12.1 beta drivers, except for the fact they add support for the Epic Games store. Other than that one inclusion nothing else seems to have changed with no performance improvements or fixes mentioned. The known issues AMD have listed remain the same as well, with some systems running multiple displays still potentially experiencing mouse lag when one display is enabled but turned off. Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is still likely to crash at certain locations on Windows 7 systems. Overall, if you plan to check out the Epic Games store you may want to grab these drivers otherwise you can likely just hit snooze and wait for the next release.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.12.1.1 Beta

With more and more companies creating their very own digital storefronts in the PC gaming space, it was only a matter of time until Epic Games threw their hat into the ring. With an announcement posted today, by Tim Sweeney the Epic Games store is now officially a reality. The new digital storefront will be made available for PC and Mac to start with, while other platforms will be added throughout 2019. In regards to games available on the platform, Epic will offer Fortnite alongside a set of hand-curated titles at launch. What those games might be is currently unknown.

Delivering a shot across the bow at Steam and their 30% revenue cut, Epic's game store will instead only take 12%, resulting in developers earning 88% of sales revenue. If they are using Unreal Engine the 5% engine royalty will be waived by Epic and instead is factored into their original 12% take. Putting that into perspective, an Unreal Engine based game released on Steam currently gives developers only 65% of the revenue with Steam earning 30% and Epic 5% due to engine royalties. Going from 65% to 88% is a significant increase in earnings, and it doesn't matter what game engine a developer uses, the revenue split will remain the same. This should leave developers quite happy since they are not limited by game engine choice and Epic benefits from a vastly increased selection of titles they can offer in their digital store.

CCP games, the company behind the deep and uniquely player-driven spaceship MMO game EVE Online, has confirmed that Unreal Engine 4 is the exclusive development tool for all of CCP Games' currently unannounced projects. CCP's commitment to Unreal stems from the engine's stability, quick prototyping and the solid cross-platform support for both established and new hardware.

CCP's development teams globally are taking advantage of the powerful and easy-to-use functionality of UE4, from fluid integration of third-party systems with plug-ins and modules to improved networking and cross-platform support. CCP's game developers have jumped on board the exclusive use of UE4, specifically its Unreal Editor that leads the way in terms of lighting and rendering solutions, world composition, landscape sculpting and Blueprint prototyping.

Earlier in January of this year, PUBG Corp threw a lawsuit at Epic Games, looking to assert its rights to the "Battle Royale" mode that game was mimicking from the original Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. It now seems that PUBG Corp has decided to throw in the towel over its pursuit of Epic Games' Fortnite as a "straight copy" of its battle royale mode - a move that came only after Fortnite had eclipsed PUBG Corp's game in concurrent players and revenue generation.

Perhaps at least part of this issue was dealt with by Chinese giant Tencent, which owns part of Bluehole Inc (PUBG Corp's parent company) and part of Epic Games - it hurts investors when two of their pots are throwing dirt at each other. Another part of the equation - and the most likely, considering the amount of time the lawsuit survived in court - pertains to how PUBG makes use of EPIC Games' Unreal Engine. I'd say it's at least slightly important to keep a good relationship with such a company.

Epic Games has been dragged to court by PUBG Corporation, developer of "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" (PUBG) over "copyright infringement" and "plagiarism" in its smash-hit online multiplayer game "Fortnite." PUBG dominated PC gaming in 2017, as its South Korea-based developers raked in hundreds of millions of Dollars in revenues, having sold over 45 million copies of the game. When it released in 2017, "Fotnite" wasn't anywhere near as popular as PUBG, since it only included a tower-defense mode dubbed "Save the World." The game's fortunes turned around when Epic Games introduced the "Battle Royale" mode, which is an open-world free-for-all (FFA). PUBG has a problem with that.

In its complaint, PUBG Corp alleges that "Fortnite" Battle Royale mode copies not just PUBG's gameplay, but also its USP of dropping players in arenas empty-handed, and making them scout out weapons and items so they could both survive and hunt down others. The complaint also includes allegations that the user-interface (UI) is heavily borrowed from that of PUBG. Interestingly, PUBG itself has been inspired by Japanese film "Batoru Rowaiaru," the title of which loosely transliterates to "Battle Royale." This is a fact the defense could bludgeon PUBG's lawyers with.

Developer GSC Game World announced S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 almost eight years ago in 2010. To say that the game has been on a wild roller coaster ride is an understatement. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was cancelled back in 2011 and resurrected later on in the same year. Then GSC Game World cancelled it for a second time in 2012. Now, six years later, it appears that the developer is willing to give it another go. The official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 website went live today with the "2.0.2.1." inscription suggesting that the game is scheduled for a 2021 release. Sergiy Grygorovych, CEO of GSC Game World, has confirmed on his Facebook that GSC Game World is currently working on the title. Not much is known about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 at this point other than it's built on Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4.

Ashland University from Ohio has announced that they are adding Epic Games' popular battle royale Fortnite to their eSports program. Beginning fall 2018, the university will be giving away $4,000 scholarships to those who are interested. Admission will take both skill level and academics into consideration, of course. If you're a pretty good Fortnite player and wish to attend Ashland University, here's your opportunity to apply to the program. "Fortnite appeals to both the core and casual gaming audience," eSports head coach Josh Buchanan stated in a statement. "We're excited to provide this platform for gamers who want to showcase their skills in a more competitive space. Fortnite facilitates an environment that allows players to get creative, innovate and show off their mastery of their skills."

The first sign of disaster appeared earlier this month when Epic Games announced that they were moving some of their employees from Paragon's development team over to work on Fortnite instead. The entire Paragon community was worried as the MOBA's future looked very dim. Given the game's lackluster performance, Epic Games have decided that the best course of action is to close down Paragon for good. The company will be pulling the plug on April 26, 2018. Players are entitled to a full refund for every purchase they've made regardless of platform. The refund process is relatively easy. The first requirement is to have a Epic account. Non-PC players will need to create one. Once you have linked your Epic account, you can start the refund process here.

EPIC Games has made an investment that was both likely and unlikely: the acquisition of Cloudgine, a software company based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that specializes in real-time cloud computing technologies. The company's name has appeared associated with Microsoft's now almost infamous Crackdown 3 project for the Xbox One console, which has been met with delays after delays. The sum for the acquisition hasn't been announced, though EPIC was forthcoming with the intention: they aim to integrate Cloudgine's software and cloud computing solutions on their Unreal engine. The full EPIC press release follows.

Your underpowered PC can now pack the punch of high-performance GeForce GTX GPUs with GeForce NOW. Starting today, the game-streaming service, which launched a successful beta last summer, is available as a free beta compatible with most Windows-based desktops and laptops. GeForce NOW can connect gamers to their library of games from many of the top digital stores - and starting today that includes Uplay PC, Ubisoft's PC games portal.

"Ubisoft is excited that gamers playing acclaimed franchises such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege on Uplay PC can now enjoy outstanding play experiences on PCs and Macs thanks to NVIDIA's futuristic GeForce NOW service, without needing a high-end PC," said Chris Early, vice president of Partnerships and Revenue at Ubisoft. "NVIDIA is powering a high-quality experience that now streams a selection of Ubisoft's top franchises."

The official discussion board for Epic Games, frequented by developers and gamers of Unreal Engine, "Unreal Tournament," and soon "Paragon," was hacked, exposing dates of birth, IP addresses, registration dates, registration e-mail addresses, and allegedly passwords, of over 800,000 users, reports The Hacker News. The hackers reportedly got their hands on the data by exploiting a vulnerability in the outdated version of vBulletin that Epic Games uses.

Epic Games, however, denies that the hackers got their hands on passwords. "We believe a recent Unreal Engine and Unreal Tournament forum compromise revealed email addresses and other data entered into the forums, but no passwords in any form, neither salted, hashed, nor plaintext," the company stated. ZDNet reports that a larger portion of the vBulletin database, which includes user posts and private-messages, could also have been stolen.

Start a fight in Epic Games' new MOBA, Paragon with the GAME READY pack, free when you buy select EVGA GeForce GTX graphics cards or notebooks. $115 of in-game essentials help you hone your skills and look good on the battlefield of Agora.

The Paragon GAME READY pack ($115 in-game value) includes 1,000 Paragon Coins (worth $115) - In-game currency to spend on additional Master Challenges, skins, and boosts; Seven Hero Master Challenges - Those who would dare reach the highest levels of skill can tackle Master Challenges. As you increase your Hero level, you'll unlock new card packs, unique taunts, and valuable rewards; and two Exclusive Skins - Look good while dominating the competition.

Tim Sweeney, a lead developer with Epic Games, behind the industry-leading Unreal game engine, once again raised concerns in a recent interview with print-magazine "Edge," that Microsoft is systematically killing digital distribution platform Steam, by deliberately eroding the reliability and longevity of the Win32 programming interface for PC versions of Windows, in favor of its UWP (universal Windows platform), through updates to the OS.

Microsoft, Sweeney argues, is carefully avoiding big changes to the way third-party software is distributed and used on Windows, but is definitely seen to be taking small strategic steps, "sneaky maneuvers," that could lead to Windows Store either monopolizing all third-party software distribution on the platform, or worse, making it the only way you can get third-party apps. The rising reliability issues affecting Steam, a Win32 API-based platform that distributes Win32 software, Sweeney claims are telltale signs of that dark future of the PC platform. Microsoft's biggest argument in favor of UWP is that software is inherently more secure, since it's sandboxed (covered in abstraction layers and virtualized by the OS) even further.