Age of Empires: Definitive Edition will release on the PC next month and as you may have guessed, it will be available exclusively via Microsoft’s Windows Store. And from the looks of it, the company does not plan to bring this game to Steam. Not only that, but Microsoft blames Valve for it.

In an interview with GameStar, Microsoft producer Jörg Neumann claimed that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition will be using Xbox Live and right now Steam does not support it. Neumann claimed that this is the main reason why the game will not be available on Steam as the Steam version would not work with the Windows Store version.

“There are certain things that are important to us, and in multiplayer games, we want to make sure our fans can play together. Therefore it is not okay if someone buys the game in one store and another in the other, and then – for some strange reason – they cannot play together. We’re totally against it, and our only way to make sure of that is Xbox Live.”

However, there is already a game that supports cross-play between the Steam and the Windows Store versions, and that title is no other than Killer Instict. Now I don’t know how Iron Galaxy has managed to achieve it, but perhaps Microsoft should take some lessons from them? Unless of course this is nothing more than a mere excuse and not the real reason behind the absense of a Steam release for Age of Empires: Definitive Edition.