The creator of 'Fortnite' is trying to shake up the PC gaming industry - here's why a lot of fans are very upset over it

To be clear, no one is upset about Epic Games offering a larger cut of sales to game makers.

The first major issue surrounded a game named "Metro Exodus" — the third game in the "Metro" series of first-person shooters set in a post-apocalyptic Russia.

Just two weeks ahead of the game's February 15 launch date, Epic Games announced "Metro Exodus" would be an Epic Games Store exclusive — it would arrive on Steam one year later.

But the game's Steam store page was already live, and some people had already pre-ordered. Many others had played the previous two games through Steam. And some of those folks were pretty upset to hear that the game could only be accessed on PC through a totally different storefront.

Then Valve issued a statement on the game's preorder page (emphasis ours):

"Sales of 'Metro Exodus' have been 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."

What happened next was foreshadowing a coming trend: so-called "review bombing."

After "Metro Exodus," Epic Games announced a string of other high-profile exclusive games coming to its PC store: "The Division 2," "Borderlands 3," and a variety of others.

Like the previous games in the "Metro" series, both "The Division" and "Borderlands" had previous games available on the Steam store — and they were the target of so-called "review bombs."

Since the Steam store has a review function for users — whether they own a game or not — the system can be gamed. Steam users can attack a game's review score in an effort to send a message to the game's maker. And that's exactly what they did with previous "Metro" games, as seen above.

Tencent is a major Chinese company, and it has several major investments in the video game market.

It's the majority stakeholder in "League of Legends" studio Riot Games, and the majority stakeholder in "Clash of Clans" studio Supercell. It's also an investor in Activision ("Call of Duty") and Ubisoft ("Assassin's Creed"), among others.

To put it mildly, Tencent is one of the biggest stakeholders in the video game industry.

In addition to all the previously mentioned companies, Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games. And thus, because Chinese company Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games, the Epic Games Store has been labelled "spyware" by some fans.

The most prominent post surfaced by Google accusing the Epic Games Store of spying on users is from Reddit. It alleges that Tencent "have very heavy ties to the Chinese government," and ties that allegation to various technical processes carried out by the Epic Games Store application.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney took to Twitter to respond directly.

"I support everyone’s right to complain about tech industry stuff," Sweeney wrote on Twitter earlier this month. "Epic’s store, with exclusive games and a spartan feature set, is a fine target for ire. But please help separate facts and opinions from the lies about spyware and foreign control."

Sweeney is the founder of Epic Games in addition to being CEO — he's been with the company from day one, and is a well-respected video game industry veteran.

"I’m the controlling shareholder in Epic Games, and have been since 1991," he wrote. "We have a number of outside investors now. Tencent is the largest. All of Epic’s investors our [sic] friends and partners. None can dictate decisions to Epic. None have access to Epic customer data."

He noted his long relationship with Tencent CEO Pony Ma, going all the way back to the early 2000s, and he pointed to "recent anti-China rage" as the culprit for spyware allegations.

There are a variety of reasons that people are mad about the Epic Games Store, but the central reason is simple: By paying for exclusivity deals with big games, fans of those franchises are obligated to buy the game through the Epic Games Store.

It doesn't cost anything to sign up for an Epic Games account, or to download the Epic Games Store application.

But it's an entirely different ecosystem than Steam, with fewer features than Steam, and the only reason the game is there is because of business — Epic paid the game's publisher for a window of exclusivity.

While it may be frustrating, it's extremely unlikely to stop. Not only is Epic Games making more than enough money to keep paying for exclusives, but the move has been a major success: "Metro Exodus" sold 2.5 times the previous game in the series.