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.

NVIDIA today announced new GeForce experience features to be integrated and expanded in wake of its RTX platform push. The new features include increased number of Ansel-supporting titles (including already released Prey and Vampyr, as well as the upcoming Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider), as well as RTX-exclusive features that are being implemented into the company's gaming system companion.

There are also some features being implemented that gamers will be able to take advantage of without explicit Ansel SDK integration done by the games developer - which NVIDIA says will bring Ansel support (in any shape or form) to over 200 titles (150 more than the over 50 titles already supported via SDK). And capitalizing on Battlefield V's relevance to the gaming crowd, NVIDIA also announced support for Ansel and its Highlights feature for the upcoming title.

The highly-awaited Metro Exodus, based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro novels, also was presented as an RTX game. 4A Games praised the ease of RTX's implementation into their custom graphics pipeline. This came after 4A Games had already developed their Global Illumination system that was present and developed based on the previous games, and RTX's implementation basically overruled all of their techniques for that particular set of graphical effects. Sampling the environment with single-ray bounces allows for temporally coherent scenes and surfaces linked by refracting and bouncing rays of light.

A very impressive part of the presentation revolved around opening up windows for more light to penetrate the environment, with actual changes in ambient lighting, brightness, shadows and details changing dynamically. 4A Games also mentioned the emergent graphical effects that weren't programmed into the pipeline, such as pulsing lights dancing with the light sources, as part of a massive technological leap.

(Update 1: Added the full 21 games list for RTX support.)

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at the company's Koln event announced partnerships with multiple games studios. This is part of NVIDIA's push to bring real time ray tracing and NVIDIA's RTX platforms' achievements to actual games that gamers can play. These encompass heavy hitters such as Battlefield V (DICE), Hitman 2 (IO Interactive), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics), Metro Exodus (4A Games) and Control (Remedy Entertainment).

However, not all games are made equal, and NVIDIA knows there are significant gaming experiences coming from other, smaller studios. That's why partnerships have been established with the studios developing games such as We Happy Few (Compulsion Games), Atomic Heart (Mundfish), Assetto Corsa Competizione (Kunos Simulazioni), just to name a few. Of course, RTX's nature as a technology depends on NVIDIA's push for the initial implementation wave, and the company will be looking to bring developers up to speed with all needed programming skills, needs and difficulties inherent to the adoption of any new development framework. However, that DICE have already implemented an Alpha Version of NVIDIA's RTX technology into Battlefield V is surely a good sign.

Metro Exodus was originally set to be released in Autumn of this year. However, Deep Silver and 4A Games recently announced that the game has been delayed until the first quarter of 2019. They want to continue polishing the game to deliver the best user experience possible. In Metro Exodus, the player takes control of Artyom and must lead a band of Spartan Rangers across a hostile, post-apocalyptic Russia to search for greener pastures in the East. Earlier this year, 4A Games also announced their collaboration with NVIDIA to feature the company's RTX real-time ray tracing technology in Metro Exodus. We'll get to see it in action at E3 this year as both Deep Silver and 4A games have confirmed that they will be releasing some new gameplay of the game at the venue.

The development of Metro Exodus is progressing well; we are all really excited by what we are seeing. We have been constantly reviewing the games progress to ensure that we deliver a product that gamers and fans of the Metro series want and deserve, as well as keeping an eye on announcements from our competitor products. We want everyone to be able to experience what is the most ambitious Metro game to date at its absolute best and therefore we have taken the decision to move the release date to Q1 2019. We know that this will be disappointing news for fans that had hoped to play the game this year, but also know that you will appreciate the results that this additional development time and new release date will bring.

After the world was introduced to the Microsoft and NVIDIA partnership to bring real time raytracing solutions to DirectX 12 via NVIDIA's RTX initiative, we now have confirmation of what is expected to be the first game studio - and AAA game experience - to feature the technology. In a post from their official Twitter account, 4A Games has announced that they are collaborating with NVIDIA to bring RTX's effects to their upcoming Metro: Exodus open-world video game.

The company further warned users to keep at attention towards the impending release of a proof of concept video to be released during GDC. 4A Games is one of those companies that has been delivering incredible experiences through and through, and has already dabbled with NVIDIA's technologies in the past (particularly with their first game, Metro 2033). Here's hoping that AMD can work its drivers into great performance levels in supporting this DX12 technology on their graphics cards as well.

Deep Silver and 4A Games today announced that Metro Exodus is set for release in Autumn 2018, on Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PlayStation4 computer entertainment system, and PC. Revealed during The Game Awards, The Aurora Trailer offers a glimpse of post-apocalyptic Moscow - a hostile world locked in an endless nuclear winter. The desperate survivors who cling to existence beneath the surface in the ruins of the Metro have long given up hope of a life beyond Moscow... all except for one.

As Artyom, you must flee the Metro and lead a band of Spartan Rangers on an incredible, continent-spanning journey across post-apocalyptic Russia in search of a new life in the East. This thrilling story-line will span an entire calendar year through the changing seasons. Inspired by the internationally best-selling novels Metro 2033 and Metro 2035 by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro Exodus continues Artyom's story in the greatest Metro adventure yet.