For a very long time, Steam has been the go-to market for PC games, but it seems like the table has turned in the last few months. Many developers have decided to create their own stores and others are pulling out their games from Steam and switching to Epic Games Store. The Internet has been blown with Epic vs Steam news, articles, and opinions. It has clearly become a major dish in the gaming community. So, what’s the tea? Nothing really, it’s just that three of the major games releasing this February will not be sold on Steam. Instead, they will launch on other PC digital distribution platforms. These are not just any other games but some of the biggest titles of the bunch. We have 4A Games’ Metro Exodus to be released in Epic, Sumo Digital’s Crackdown 3 to be released through Windows Store, and BioWare’s Anthem to launch in EA’s Origin. And it's likely that we will be seeing more of this trend throughout 2019.
Steam is pretty much suffering a huge blow in losing high-profile games since late last year. Added to the list of PC games that already have exclusive rights with Epic we can find The Division 2, Journey, and the final two episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season. Epic continues to challenge Steam matching Steam's refund policy and still offering a better cut from the benefits to the developers than Valve's platform. This is Epic vs. Steam at its best!
Valve has called the move with Metro Exodus "unfair for Steam customers" and published a statement alerting the potential buyers of this arrangement. The statement reads:
"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."
The massive number of players on Steam is their huge advantage, but for Epic to call out on publishers and convince them to put up their games in their store instead is something that Valve probably was not expecting. We don’t know how this Epic vs Steam battle would end, but we know that there are changes to come to the world of PC games digital distribution in the years to come.
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