This is where I strongly disagree with you. Buying store exclusivity isn't turning Epic's store in a better storefront than Steam. Offering better features, policies and prices for consumers is.
And so far, Epic isn't doing any of this, nor have they communicated any plans to do so. Only thing we know is that they'll play catch up with some of Steam's basic features. But meanwhile they are taking away our choice where to buy and play certain 3rd party games. Is it so unreasonable to dislike this?
Considering that choice didn't exist in the first place and in reality most PC games released today are only playable on Steam (see my Monster Hunter example) I do think it's unreasonable, yeah. Now if this is all about being able to BUY the games somewhere else to then having to play them exclusively on one platform, then yes, then I understand the disappointment.
I also agree with you that exclusivty doesn't make the Epic Store a better storefront - my point is that exclusivity is pretty much the only way any Store could have any chance to ever actually compete with Steam to any significant degree. No Storefront feature will ever make a significant portion of Steam's (and, with it, the PC industry's) user base abandon Steam and instead shop and register somewhere else. To even be able to gain a foothold such measures are absolutely necessary. Now, would I have liked the Epic Store to have more features when released? Sure! I personally don't care for Chat, Forums or anything like that but sure, that would have been way better. But, truthfully, I don't think that would have changed the reaction it got because either way, exclusives would have been necessary. Just as many PC Games have been Steam Exclusive for years now.
I'm probably not the only one who is continously reminded of the Steam launch by this situation. Steam was absolutely despised for years because it did exactly what Epic is accused of now - it splintered the PC market and made you register at one specific program, binding games to that account while, previously, you could have done with them whatever you wanted. Valve pushed through and, over the years, turned a completely miserable experience into what Steam eventually became...and then they grew, and grew and grew and fundamentally changed from a heavily curated storefront to a almost completely unsupervised collection of thousands and thousands of games with almost zero discoverability that developers grew more and more unsatisfied with. Epic wants to tap into that market again, delivering that smaller, heavily curated Storefront. It's going to be interesting to see if their growing pains will lead to a similiar growth as it did with Steam and if anyone even remembers these first months of the Epic Store's life in 4 or 5 years.
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