I finally got around to playing Metro Exodus this weekend, which meant doing something Ive been putting off for about three weeks now: actually installing the Epic Games Store launcher.
Quick recap for anyone who missed it, because this whole thing happened fast. Back in late January, Deep Silver and 4A Games announced that Exodus, which had been up for preorder on Steam for months, was pulling a bait and switch. The PC version would launch exclusively through the Epic Games Store instead, with Steam locked out for a year. If youd already preordered on Steam you were grandfathered in and still got your copy there, but nobody new could buy it on the platform anymore. The game came out this past Friday, the 15th.
The backlash was immediate and, honestly, kind of funny to watch unfold in real time. Since people couldnt review-bomb Exodus itself on Steam (it wasnt there to bomb), a bunch of them went and dumped negative reviews on Metro: Last Light Redux instead, an older game in the same series thats been sitting on Steam since 2014. Valve had to actually step in and temporarily disable new reviews on that page because the flood got so bad. Im not saying its the most productive form of protest Ive ever seen but I get the impulse.
Heres where I land on this, and Ill admit its not a popular take among some of my usual haunts: I dont think exclusivity deals are inherently evil. Epic needs some way to compete with a platform thats had a fifteen-year head start and basically zero real competition for most of that time. Fine. But the way this one was handled, yanking a game people had already put money down to preorder, felt genuinely bad, and Deep Silver deserved the heat they got for it even after they backtracked and let existing preorders complete on Steam.
What I actually want to talk about though is the launcher itself, because after using it for a weekend I have thoughts. Its fine? Its very obviously a 1.0 product. No shopping cart, so if you want to buy more than one thing you're checking out separately every time. No cloud saves, which I didnt realize until my laptop's Windows update murdered my save file Saturday night and I lost about ninety minutes of progress through the Caspian level. No user reviews, no forums, no achievements last I checked. It's basically a storefront and a download button bolted together, which I guess is honest at least, but calling it competition for Steam right now feels premature.
And now my desktop has four different launchers pinned to the taskbar. Steam, Epic, Origin (for Anthem, more on that maybe another time, its a mess), and Uplay because apparently Im contractually obligated to own Uplay if I want to play anything Ubisoft ever makes. I used to make fun of my dad for having forty icons scattered across his desktop in no particular order. I am becoming my dad, except mine are all game launchers instead of shortcuts to Solitaire.
The game itself, for what its worth, is really good so far. Its a big step away from the corridor-shooter structure of the first two Metro games into something more open, closer to Stalker if youve played that, and the writing and atmosphere are still doing that specific dread-and-loneliness thing the series does better than almost anyone else. Sam's Story DLC isnt out yet but Im already looking forward to it.
Anyway. If youre one of the people still refusing to touch the Epic Store on principle I understand the position even if I dont fully share it, and if youre one of the people who went and left a one-star review on a five-year-old game as a proxy protest, I hope it felt cathartic at least. Valve's probably going to have to figure out a policy for this because Im guessing Exodus wont be the last exclusivity fight of the year.