It’s been a long year since Metro Exodus came out. Originally slated to release on Steam alongside the PS4 and Xbox One versions, publisher Deep Silver pulled a last-minute switch to the Epic Games Store that aggravated a ton of customers. People weren’t happy that this promised version suddenly vanished in the night, not to mention Epic now had a year-long exclusivity deal going on.

Thankfully, all of that can be water under the bridge. On the official Metro Twitter account, developer 4A Games revealed that Exodus will be shedding its Epic exclusivity on February 15, 2020. The Tweet gives a breakdown of when the Steam version will go live based on your region. That should help anyone waiting patiently at night for the game to launch.

The controversy surrounding the Epic Games Store hasn’t died down that much in the last year. A lot of gamers are vocal about their displeasure with Epic’s digital storefront. While it’s fine to wait a little longer for something, the main issue with Metro Exodus was that the game was sold on Steam right up until the announcement of its switch to Epic.

If you did happen to buy the game before then, you were able to play Exodus and its DLC on Steam over the past year. Deep Silver likely had to grant that access or face some kind of legal trouble. Still, it was a seriously bad move on the part of the publisher and it drew all kinds of negative press during what should have been a happy time.

At least that exclusivity is coming to a close soon. It’s one thing on consoles when a console manufacturer is also the developer/publisher, but there isn’t much reason to lock your PC game to a single storefront. That just segments a platform that has existed without such restrictions in the past. At the same time, Valve’s hands-off approach with Steam has created a storefront flooded with garbage that buries legitimately good indie games. Epic didn’t have to be so consumer-unfriendly with its business, but what other option was there for tackling Steam?

Source: Twitter

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