The Epic Games store data privacy issue is rumbling on: Steam maker Valve has suggested it's miffed Epic's launcher copies Steam user data - and it's declared it's going to investigate.

Epic has had to respond to concern about what the Epic launcher is doing under the hood with Steam-related stuff on people's PCs after Epic's app was found to be copying a Steam user data file called localconfig.vdf.

Epic has confirmed the launcher makes an encrypted local copy of your localconfig.vdf Steam file, but insisted it only imports your Steam friends with your explicit permission.

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How far we've come. Back at Gamescom 2018, the Digital Foundry team was hugely impressed by 4A Games' real-time global illumination technology, powered by the ray tracing hardware acceleration made possible by Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti. There was just one problem - Team Green's top-end GPU struggled to sustain 60 frames per second at 1080p resolution, and if the this card was struggling, how would the lower-end cards compare? Thankfully, the final game possessed a revelatory increase in performance, and the goalposts have shifted dramatically, to the point where we wondered: can the 2080 Ti lock to anything like 4K60? And just what kind of ray tracing experience can you get on the RTX 2060, Nvidia's least capable ray tracing model.

Suffice to say, this exercise is going to require some serious settings tweaking - similar to our prior tests with Battlefield 5 running on the RTX 2060. And yes, it may well involve some overclocking too. But one of the biggest challenges facing us is actually a lack of granularity in the settings. But even if we are applying very coarse changes to the game here, settings tweaks are the place to start if we are going to try to achieve 60 frames per second locks. Global presets consisting of low, medium, high, ultra and extreme settings are available - but we can take low off the table as it's not compatible with ray tracing.

Each preset tends to gradually diminish volumetric lighting quality, and shadow map cascade quality. Dropping down to medium settings kills off shadows on foliage, and other unpleasant effects start to kick in, such as a noticeable reduction on screen-space relections. Our quest for a locked 60fps with ray tracing shouldn't come at the expense of a brutally compromised experience elsewhere, and I found that the high preset maintains most of the game's beauty, while acting as a very close mirror to 4A's own choices for the Xbox One X version - a good place on which to base our testing.

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Something akin to the opposite of review-bombing is going on over at the Metro Exodus Steam store page.

The Metro Exodus Steam store page doesn't sell the game - it was removed after Epic and Koch Media / Deep Silver signed a timed exclusivity deal for the game to be sold on the Epic Games store for 12 months.

That decision sparked a backlash from some Steam users who were upset Metro Exodus had left Valve's platform. And some took to review-bombing previous Metro games on Steam in a bid to show their discontent.

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Remember the days when key technological innovations in gaming debuted on PC? The rise of multi-platform development and the arrival of PC technology in the current generation of consoles has witnessed a profound shift. Now, more than ever, PlayStation and Xbox technology defines the baseline of a visual experience, with upgrade vectors on PC somewhat limited - often coming down to resolution and frame-rate upgrades. However, the arrival of real-time ray tracing PC technology is a game-changer, and 4A Games' Metro Exodus delivers one of the most exciting, forward-looking games we've seen for a long, long time. It's a title that's excellent on consoles, but presents a genuinely game-changing visual experience on the latest PC hardware.

The game is fascinating on many levels. First of all, as we approach the tail-end of this console generation, it's actually the first title built from the ground up for current-gen hardware from 4A Games - genuine pioneers in graphics technology. It also sees 4A transition from a traditional linear-style route through its games to a more open world style of gameplay, though the narrative element is much more defined, and missions can be approached in a much more Crysis-like way. Think of it more as a kind of 'wide' level design, as opposed to an Ubisoft-style, icon-filled sandbox. Regardless, this transition requires a massive rethink in the way that the world of Metro is rendered and lit, while at the same time maintaining the extreme detail seen in previous Metro titles. And remember, all of this has to work not just on the latest and greatest PCs and enhanced consoles, but on base Xbox and PlayStation hardware too.

And then there's the more forward-looking, next generation features within the game. Real-time ray tracing is now possible on PCs equipped with Nvidia RTX graphics cards, and while what we saw at Gamescom was highly impressive, we were looking at 4A Games' very earliest implementation of ray tracing, with frame-rates at 1080p dipping beneath 60 frames per second on the top-end RTX 2080 Ti. And this raises an obvious question - how would lesser cards cope? The answer comes down to 4A revising its RT implementation, revamping the technology to deliver equivalent results to its stunning ray traced global illumination solution, but doing so in such a way that allows for all of the RTX family of GPUs to deliver good results.

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The PC version of Metro Exodus is a genuine game-changer for graphics technology - a vision of the way in which developers can take real-time rendering to the next level. In some respects, it is this generation's Crysis moment - where the current state of the art is pushed to its limits, and where we see an aggressive push to deliver a taste - and maybe more - of next generation graphics.

We expected something like this simply because of the pedigree of the developer and its technology. Metro and the 4A engine command immense respect for many PC enthusiasts in terms of the way it pushes technology. Metro 2033 on PC punished the most powerful rigs and looked generally a generation apart from its console release on Xbox 360 - utilising technology in artful, non-tacked on ways above and beyond what consoles could deliver. I would know, it was the second game I played on my vintage 2010 Core i7 930 PC paired with two GTX 470s in SLI- and 2033 sure made a mess of that PC on ultra. I am not a complete masochist, but I do enjoy seeing even the best PC hardware punished.

This tradition is continued with Metro Exodus in a way that I am particularly excited about. As is, Metro Exodus' PC version takes the cake as the thing to beat for me in the future. The 4A engine has seen a vast array of upgrades, and Metro Exodus runs the gamut of graphics effects and polish that I love from first-person games. And Metro does first-person so well, starting with that most essential of elements - inhabiting the view of a character. Metro makes you feel as if you are Artyom in several ways, many of which are down to the graphical techniques in place.

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