Easiest answer:
They did not compete on consumer pricing, features, and a better ecosystem but instead by attrition of third party exclusives to funnel people into a far more barebones ecosystem that in many cases makes it more expensive and outright unavailable for pc consumers.
This only got exacerbated when EGS, industry people, and the gaming press ignored consumer concerns and began holding hollow PR talking points as gospel without any nuance or full discussion. "Competition is good" "Better cut for devs"
They were in lock step with the same talking points page AND ignoring/discrediting any and all concerns.
This is an aggressive and multifacetted marketing push to barge into a sector in a industry with no benefit to the consumer. This is crony capitalism of large corporations making decisions for the consumer in backroom deals on full display. This is not organic competition.
This is a good way to put it.
Absolutely not. They are the market leading store, but they don't block anyone from releasing their games elsewhere, or even selling keys that work on Steam outside of Steam for which Valve get 0% of the money!
Valve has consistently shown that they are developing Steam with consumers in mind and I can't think of an online system/store platform that has evolved more over the same period of time, even though you seem to think they are slow to improve Steam.
I just don't understand why you're calling Valve "lazy" when they are responsible for more features and pro-consumer policies than any other games store on pc or console?
I'm also pretty sure that the majority of pc gamers want competition. But not like Epic is doing right now. Forcing people to use a new store by taking every other option away isn't what we were hoping for.
FACTS
Not facts like "I agree with you strongly". Facts like, "the actual things that happen in real life."
It's a fact that valve has been consistently reinvesting into technologies to expand steam. It's a fact that these features go way above and beyond what we ever expect a launcher to do. It's a fact that these features benefit users and even resellers along with benefiting valve and in some cases all of PC gaming.
Go ahead and deny it. Say valve's done nothing. Say they sit on their ass. Say it all you want because YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT.