Does Valve want to go toe-to-toe with the store Fortnite built? If I were in Gabe Newell’s position, I wouldn’t want to.Įven though Valve won’t want to do it, the easiest way to prevent publishers from signing exclusivity deals like the one Deep Silver just agreed to is to change its revenue sharing model to be competitive with Epic and (eventually) Discord.
Even if it takes Epic some time to build out its library and nail down exclusivity deals with publishers, it has the cash on hand to wait it out and eventually hit Steam where it hurts. Valve can’t be fooled by the fact that the Epic Games Store is starting small.
Now that companies with war chests full of money and massive existing user bases are undercutting Steam in a specific attempt to gain market share, Valve’s position isn’t as secure as it used to be. Back when everyone had the same revenue sharing model, Valve had a stranglehold on the distribution space.
The company even seems to be hedging its bets here, because Metro Exodus won’t be fully exclusive to the Epic Games Store – it’ll launch on other platforms (including Steam) on February 14, 2020, a year after release.Įven though gamers are right in calling foul on Deep Silver for this move, in the end, everything comes back to Valve and Steam, which is no longer in the dominating position it once was when it comes to PC digital distribution. So the question now becomes whether or not a smaller publisher like Deep Silver can survive a transition between stores knowing that some number of users won’t make the jump with it. It makes sense that those companies would still have success after leaving Steam behind, and it’s worth pointing out that Activision only recently starting skipping Steam releases, as Destiny 2 and Black Ops 4 were the first Activision games to launch through. Platforms like Origin and seem to have worked out well for their owners, but EA and Activision are the two biggest games publishers around, and both produce some of the most successful franchises in gaming history. One only needs to take a look at the comments section on Deep Silver’s announcement today to see that a number of Steam users aren’t happy about the change. Though launching on the Epic Games Store means more money per sale for Deep Silver, this is still a risky move for the company.
Epic isn’t the only company putting the heat on Valve by giving developers more money per sale – Discord also recently announced that it will make it possible for developers to self-publish their games on its own store, and that it’ll give them 90% of each sale, beating the revenue sharing models from both Epic and Steam. One has to wonder if this move by Deep Silver and other publishers will cause Valve to rethink its revenue sharing model for Steam. “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.” At the time of this writing, both the standard and gold editions of Metro Exodus are still available to purchase from the Steam store, but that won’t be the case for much longer. It also says that this decision from Deep Silver is “unfair to Steam customers,” especially considering how long Metro Exodus been up for pre-order on the platform.
You can read the full update in the image below, but essentially, Steam reiterates Epic’s announcement that Metro Exodus sales will soon be soon be halted on the platform. Valve isn’t staying silent through all of this, as it has posted an alert to the Steam store page for Metro Exodus. Those who purchased the standard edition without the expansion pass will still be able to purchase standalone DLC or the expansion pass through Steam as well. In an FAQ that was somewhat ironically posted to Metro Exodus‘s Steam page, Deep Silver explains that though the game is being removed from Steam later today, those who already pre-ordered it will still receive the game, any pre-order bonuses, and expansion pass content though Steam. As you can imagine, some of those who have already pre-ordered the game through Steam are a little upset by this news, but as it turns out, they don’t actually need to do anything to get their game. So, it’s a logical financial move on the part of Deep Silver, but there’s one thing complicating the matter: Metro Exodus has been available to pre-order on Steam for quite some time at this point.