The Metro Exodus story is all about leaving the familiar behind and seeking fortune elsewhere. This theme extends to the franchise’s approach to the digital marketplace as well. Today Deep Silver and Epic Games announced a partnership that makes the Epic Games Store the sole digital distributor of the PC version of the game moving forward. 

“Metro Exodus is amazing and is deservedly one of the most anticipated PC titles of 2019,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. “We are partnering with Deep Silver to launch Metro Exodus, underpinned by Epic’s marketing support and commitment to offering an 88% revenue split, enabling game creators to further reinvest in building great games and improving the economics of game stores for everybody.”

When Epic Games announced the 88/12 revenue split, we expected to see many publishers reconsider their relationship with Steam, where Valve keeps 30 percent of the profit unless a game hits a $50 million threshold, whereafter the split transitions to 80/20. Metro is now the second high-profile title to defect, following Ubisoft’s The Division 2. 

Those who already pre-purchased Metro Exodus on Steam or any other digital retailer will still receive the game on that platform when it launches on February 15. But North Americans who pre-order the game on the Epic Games Store will also receive a deal. The pricing starts at $49.99, as opposed to $59.99 on Steam. Later this year, Deep Silver plans to release Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light on the Epic Games Store as well.

Following the news, Steam updated the Metro Exodus product page with this message: “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.”

We wonder how many more defections need to happen before Valve matches Epic’s revenue split. Whatever the outcome, this is good news for customers and developers alike.