- Steam has a very loyal customer base, who will not be happy if strong-armed into buying into any other ecosystem. Nobody uses Microsoft's storefront, either, remember.
- Individual indie games, no matter how good, are simply not big enough to act as system-sellers. Yes, having indie games on their platforms did wonders for Steam (and later for the PS4 and eventually Nintendo Switch; even Microsoft's XBox division belated came around to the need for them) but no one indie title or indie developer was responsible for that, and none of them are individually essential to any platform's success.
The fact that Fortnite players are likely not looking to Epic to satisfy their hunger for varied, non-Fortnite gaming experiences, something which Fortnite can't offer many of anyway, was a clear weakness that Epic needed to address, so it's no surprise that they were actively trying to lure other developers to their storefront, up to and including "poaching" them away from Steam after they'd already announced planned Steam launches. None of those early indie exclusives had moved over to Epic after already selling their product on Steam, but it really was the obvious next move.
Oh, and the move to Epic came with a $10 price drop, which wasn't immediately offered to customers who'd already bought the game on Steam.
And then there's the fact that the makers of Metro:Exodus are still advertising the game and its DLC on Steam, even though neither the game nor its DLC can be installed from Steam.
Screwed-over Steam consumers are, naturally enough, pissed, and threatening to boycott the game's launch entirely... which, in a world where The Pirate Bay exists, means that they're planning to play the game anyway, but just not pay for it, because fuck Epic and fuck the makers of Metro:Exodus for this egregiously anti-consumer bit of bullshit. All of which has the makers of Metro:Exodus threatening to boycott PC gaming entirely in the future... because that's going to help, isn't it?
As reported by WCCFTech:
Last week’s big story in gaming was the decision taken by Deep Silver/Koch Media (and supported by parent company THQ Nordic) to make Metro Exodus exclusive to the Epic Games Store for one year. This made lots of PC gamers unhappy, mostly with Epic, which forced Tim Sweeney to defend the aggressive exclusivity deals made for the new store.
So far, we didn’t have the chance to hear directly from the developers at 4AGames who got caught in all of this. However, a long-standing 4A Games developer who goes by the nickname scynet posted the following message on the GAMEINATOR Russian board. Essentially, he pointed out that those who have been review bombing the previous Metro titles on Steam or are pushing a boycott for Metro Exodus due to the game moving on the Epic Games Store don’t know how hard the developers have been working to make a great game. Perhaps more importantly, he added that if they boycott goes through chances are the next Metro game may not be on PC at all.Remember when EA Games told irate players that they didn't have to play Battlefield V is they didn't think it was sufficiently historically accurate? Yeah... they didn't, and it bombed, but apparently nobody in the video game industry learned a fucking thing from that experience, since 4AGames just did exactly the same thing here.
Look, it sucks that 4AGames' publishers are fucking this up so badly, but blaming their customers for the mess isn't the way to calm inflamed customer passions. If anything, all they've done here is throw gasoline on a fire; players who might not have cared enough before now to boycott Metro:Exodus will almost certainly regard this "our way or the highway" tone as provocation to do so. If 4AGames were hoping to talk their way out of the business of making PC games entirely, thus depriving themselves of two-thirds of their customers, then they may have just achieved it. Winning!
And Epic haven't exactly come out of this smelling like roses, either. Look, I get it: Epic have a new ecosystem to sell, and they won't be able to do that without exclusive titles. The idea, though, is to get the makers of those titles to sign exclusivity deals before their games are already being pre-sold elsewhere. Poaching them away from Steam may have felt like the most petty kind of win, but I suspect that the result will be a high-profile flop for Metro:Exodus, and exactly the kind of cautionary tale that Epic didn't need about the dangers of screwing over Steam's loyal and (as we now know) reasonably vindictive customer base.
So, to Epic Games, Deep Silver/Koch Media/THQ Nordic, and 4AGames, I say, GG! You've accelerated your progress to irrelevance considerably, and far sooner that I'd have thought would happen. Good luck digging out from under this self-served pile of bad PR.
What could Epic do differently?
The simplest thing would be to pull a GOG, allowing customers with Steam keys for games that are also available from the Epic store to access those games on either platform at no added cost to the consumer. Had they simply announced this change, promising to honour all Steam purchases of all games that shared the two platforms henceforth, the reaction of the Steam community might have been entirely different.
For people who had already purchased Metro:Exodus on Steam, of course, the publisher should have immediately offered the $10 rebate, explicitly as compensation for the added inconvenience of installing an extra game client that those consumers hadn't planned on installing previously. And the publisher should have been prepared for, and prepared the developer for, a near-term drop in unit sales, since that was always going to be the outcome here. The point of moving to Epic's store, at this stage, is to make the same money even while selling fewer units, since Epic's cut is only 60% of Steam's -- even a loss of 20% in terms of unit sales equates to the same revenue for developer and publisher, with the possibility of adding to that pile with a Steam release in a year's time, once Epic's exclusivity expires.
That strategy, however, relies on the continued goodwill of Steam's customer base, something with 4AGames now deliberately pissed away not only for themselves, but also for Deep Silver and THQ Nordic as a whole. I sure hope their move to Epic works out for them, because they're going to have a tough time grovelling their way back into the good graces of Steam consumers; Epic might be their only viable option for future releases, which may end up freezing them out of the PC gaming market almost entirely.
This is the reality of game development in the cross-platform era: in order to succeed, you need to release your game on as many platforms as possible, and can't afford to burn your bridges with any of them. There's a reason why PS4's exclusives have all been bankrolled by Sony; why the Nintendo Switch's only exclusives are Nintendo's own; and why Microsoft's only Play Anywhere timed-exclusive titles are the ones that they publish, which almost all come to Steam anyway in a few months. Exclusives are exclusively the province of platform owners; nobody else can afford to play that game in today's video game industry... except, perhaps, for Steam, which absolutely can be the only place you release a successful PC title.
UPDATED: Monday, Feb. 4th
Metro:Exodus developer 4AGames have released an official statement about their rogue employee's PR blunder. As reported by TechSpot:
Soon after the news surfaced, 4A Games released an official response on social media. It emphasized that the decision to move Exodus from Steam, where it was available for pre-order, to the Epic Store was made by Koch Media / Deep Silver. It added that the recent comments were the individual developer's alone and “do not reflect Deep Silver’s or 4A Games’ view on the future of the franchise.”
“They do reflect the hurt and disappointment of a passionate individual who has seen what was previously nothing but positive goodwill towards his work turn to controversy due to a business decision he had no control over.”
4A Games confirmed that there were no plans for Metro to become a console exclusive. “We have every intention of continuing this franchise, and a PC version will always be at the heart of our plans,” wrote the company.Not a bad bit of damage control, reassuring fans of the series that they won't have to buy consoles out of developer spite, and deflecting the blame for the mess towards publisher Koch Media/Deep Silver and away from developer 4AGames, and I like that they didn't make their employee into a scapegoat, instead framing his response as "hurt and disappointment." Just how much damage has already been done by that employee, of course, or how much of that damage will be repaired by this bit of PR boilerplate, remains to be seen.