Epic Games secured another timed exclusive, this time it’s Saber Interactive and Focus Home Interactive’s SnowRunner: A MudRunner Game. The game was announced at this year’s GamesCom 2019 event in Cologne, Germany, but the announcement was both sweet and sour given that while a lot of gamers were looking forward to a sequel, they absolutely were not expecting nor hoping for yet another Epic Games Store exclusive.

The YouTube rating basically says it all, with a sizable portion of people having downvoted the trailer after realizing that this would be a timed exclusive on the Epic Games Store.

Nevertheless, the new trailer highlights the arctic location where players will be visiting, and the various vehicles and cargo they’ll be hauling through the icy snow.

We see a number of different European-made trucks, either hauling cargo over the rocky and ice-glazed terrain, or trudging through the thick mud up the inclines in mountainous forests.

In some cases you’ll have to manage across rickety bridges made up of bumpy logs, or attempt to take your haul downhill through the tree lines where you’ll need a lot of torque to pave a way through the thickets.

From a technical standpoint the MudRunner series has always been extremely impressive due to the terrain deformation technology that allows the ground to geometrically displace and move based on the mass and momentum of the vehicle.

It’s just such a shame that Focus Home Interactive and Saber Interactive are gimping their own potential success by going in on the Epic Games Store exclusivity deal. As some of the commenters pointed out on the YouTube page, for a year they won’t have access to the Steam Workshop in order to build and share mods for SnowRunner, so it’s a pretty big setback both from a convenience and community point of view.

Anyway, you can look for SnowRunner to launch in 2020 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. For more information be sure to visit the official website.