Metro Exodus Sales on Epic Games Store Exceed Last Light Steam Sales
Metro Exodus, the latest game in the Metro franchise, launched last a little over one month ago. While the game’s initial launch sales appeared to be doing well – indeed, they were the best retail sales the series had ever gotten – very few gaming markets actually release sales figures these days. However, during their recent GDC keynote, Epic Games revealed some interesting details about how Metro Exodus sold on their platform. Shortly before its release, Metro Exodus was the subject of some controversy for a last-minute exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store.
Metro Exodus’ Controversial Exclusivity Deal with Epic Games
When Metro Exodus was first announced, it was expected to come to all platforms and multiple online retailer platforms, including Steam. In fact, the game was available to pre-order on Steam for a long time. However, just a few weeks prior to its launch, publisher Deep Silver announced that they had agreed an exclusivity deal with Epic Games. Metro Exodus became an exclusive Epic Games Store title for one year. As a result, gamers could no longer purchase it on Steam. Existing pre-orders were honoured, however, so some players were able to play the game on Steam. However, it presumably won’t become available again until February of 2020.
This move seemed to be deeply unpopular among PC gamers. Other Metro titles on Steam were review-bombed, and there was even talk of boycotting the game over the publisher’s decision. Dmitry Glukhovsky, the author of the original Metro novels and a writer for Metro Exodus, even spoke out urging fans not to abandon 4A Games and the developers who had worked so hard to make the game. (And who had not been involved with the exclusivity decision).
Metro Exodus Sales Figures on The Epic Games Store
However, according to Epic Games’ recent keynote at GDC 2019, Metro Exodus hasn’t just sold well on their platform. It’s sales were actually 2.5 times better than Metro: Last Light’s sales on Steam in its own launch period. Interestingly, this is actually a much greater increase than the overall increase in retail sales performance for Metro Exodus, which was an increase of 1.5 times. Of course, an increase to some extent is not surprising; Metro Exodus benefited from more widespread marketing, for one. It also may have benefited from the simultaneous poor sales of Far Cry New Dawn, among other factors. However, it’s easy to see why Epic would choose to highlight these figures at GDC. After all, if the figures merely mirrored the same growth in retail performance, they wouldn’t be as notable.
At the keynote, the company also revealed that the Epic Games Store now has 85 million users; a huge market which is rapidly growing to reach a comparable size to platforms like Steam or PSN, for example. (And no doubt the primary factor for the sales success of Metro Exodus.) What the sales figures also seem to show is that for all of the outrage among some vocal gamers, that outrage doesn’t seem to have had a significant impact on sales.