Axiom Verge has been free on Epic’s new game store this week, only with a surprise catch: the game crashed early on because the developer removed a bunch of files called “steam” when bringing the game over from Valve’s shopfront.
https://lastchance.cc/axiom-verge-the-kotaku-review-1694592333%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
For anyone missing Steam.xnb from the Epic store, please go to AV in your library, click the gear icon, Verify, then Update.
I was thinking it being Epic and all, I shouldn't include valve's dlls and such, so I excluded all files with "Steam" in the name… oops.
The game has since been updated, with the files restored and everything working just fine.
Ironically, the issue had to be crowdsourced on the Steam forums, since Epic’s own store doesn’t have a community section.