Epic Games is the reason behind yet another delisting update, but for Metro Exodus it’s made for a strange pre-delisting before the game is even released. While the anticipated sequel has been up for pre-order on Steam since August of 2018, the game will soon be removed from sale ahead of its February 15th release and exclusively sold on PC through the Epic Games Store until 2020. The Steam store page for Metro Exodus has been updated with the following notice:

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.

A Community Forum post has also been added by Deep Silver offering an FAQ on what Steam owners can expect. In short, anyone who has pre-purchased the game on Steam will still receive Metro Exodus on February 15th as well as any updates and DLC released in the future. The post concludes by ensuring players that Metro Exodus will eventually return to Steam after Epic’s exclusivity expires one year from now, on February 14th, 2020.

Why make the deal so close to release and ruffle the Steam playerbase? According to Deep Silver CEO Klemens Kundratitz, the profit split that Epic is offering to publishers who use the Unreal engine was worth the risk. “Epic’s generous revenue terms are a game changer that will allow publishers to invest more into content creation, or pass on savings to the players. By teaming up with Epic we will be able to invest more into the future of Metro and our ongoing partnership with series developer 4A Games, to the benefit of our Metro fans.”

For the time being I’m just going to add the game to the Watch List calendar. Thanks to @TheChrisGlass for pointing this one out to us.