In a nutshell: Metro Exodus was one of 2019's best games, but its last-minute timed exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store brought a lot of controversy. It appears, however, that plenty of people were willing to wait until the title returned to Steam, where it's been performing "great" since its recent arrival.

Back in January 2019, two weeks before release, Metro publisher Deep Silver announced that the latest installment of the franchise would be selling exclusively on Epic's store until February 15, 2020. The news came despite pre-orders for Exodus being available on Steam since its reveal. This led to Valve calling the decision "unfair," and the previous Metro titles getting review bombed by angry fans.

Metro Exodus' exclusivity deal ended a few days ago, and even though it's been available elsewhere for over a year, plenty of Steam users are buying the game. Speaking during an earnings presentation, Lars Wingefors, CEO of Deep Silver's parent company, Embracer Group, said: "Metro [Exodus] performed well on Epic and I was happy with the performance on the Epic Games Store, but that doesn't say I'm not happy with the Steam performance either, so it's been great [in] the first days."

"I was happy to see it's been performing well, selling about 200,000 copies already, and surprising to see that one big country in Asia was the biggest country buying the product, very close to America."

That big Asian country Wingefors mentioned is doubtlessly China, which is becoming a huge market for Steam---simplified Chinese is the second-most-common language on the platform, and has been the most popular on more than one occasion.

Some people let their opinions of Epic be known in Exodus' review section, which caused Google's result for Steam searches to show a description that read: "F*ck Epic Games Store." VG247 explains that Google pulled up the review from the Steam homepage, which features Metro Exodus.

We recently saw the second and final expansion for Exodus released: Sam's Story. It brings a new world to explore and packs plenty of content---definitely worth a purchase for Metro fans.