End of an era? Epic Store declared war

Metro Exodus has been withdrawn from Steam today and became an exclusive on Epic Game Store.
Those who have bought a Steam pre-release key, will be able to play it normally. The will also receive support for future updates and DLC.

What is really bothering me, the game was withdrawn from other digital distribution stores – Humble Store and Razer Game Store. Epic seems to strive for a complete monopoly and wants to kill digital distribution and deprive users of the option to buy games at a lower price. For a year at least, as the game will return to Steam on February 14, 2020.

Boxed game versions will contain Epic Games keys.

When Epic opened their store, no one actually cared much. We had this before when EA opened Origin, Ubisoft Uplay or Bethesda and Blizzard having their own platform as well. I don’t think that anyone, including Valve, thought that Epic will move so fast.

Earlier this month it has been announced that The Division 2 will be distributed exclusively as a part of multi-game deal with Ubisoft and now, 18 days before launch 4A is pulling their baby out of Steam hands. And it hurt a lot as you can read on the official statement:
“Later today, sales of Metro Exodus will be 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.”
What does it mean for us, gamers?
Well in short term – inconvenience, but hopefully it will result in lower prices and more competitive market. Epic Store still lacks in functionality if you compare it to Steam, so hopefully they will develop this further.

2019 will be interesting – that we know.