For the most part, Valve has remained fairly quiet about the new competition they face from the Epic Games Store, even as multiple high-profile PC games have been lured away from Steam. The only time Valve really fired back was when Metro Exodus was poached by Epic only a few weeks before the game’s launch. In response, Valve left the following message on the Metro Exodus Steam page:

　　Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store. […] 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.

　　That response, while arguably justified, helped fuel the intense online backlash against the Epic Games Store and their partners, and it sounds like Valve kind of regrets making it. In a recent interview with Kotaku, Steam business developer Nathaniel Blue insisted the message wasn’t meant to be a “lightning rod.”

　　I don’t think it was our intent to upset people. It wasn’t the intent of the message. It was more about the timing. The game was about to launch, and then it was [exclusive to the Epic store]. So that was the only goal of that. What came out of that was not what we expected. It wasn’t meant to be this lightning rod.

　　Blue went on to explain why Epic has mostly remained quiet about Epic since…

　　I don’t know that we’d go back in time and change it necessarily, but I can say that in the future we didn’t say anything. We didn’t continue to do that because our goal is not to upset the community or light anyone’s hair on fire. Our goal is to get developers close to customers, have a really valuable place for people to play games, and stay focused on that.

　　So yeah, next time you’re angrily defending Steam online, just remember, Valve themselves would prefer everyone just got along. Get the latest on the Epic Games Store and its various exclusives, right here.