You seem to be very emotionally invested in this fight between two corporations. You make it sound that Steam succeed because of some heroic display of courage and selflessness while Epic would be a scheming thief set to destroy it out of spite. Poor Valve, let's start a GoFundMe to help them...

Steam popularized always-online DRM. They attempted to monetize mods. They wrote the book on in-game item trading with TF2 and CS:GO, even if it meant that a bunch of underage kids were effectively becoming gamblers. Steam is not your friend, Steam is a business selling videogames and offering online services.

Most importantly, Steam is more than perfectly capable of fighting back if they see EGS as a threat.

Steam is not our friend, correct. But they also had a quasi monopoly for a long time and didn't become outright evil. I give them a lot of credit for that. Hell they still allow Devs to sell on their own site but give steam keys (afaik for free). My biggest complaint against them is stagnation.

Epic's move worries me. They are spending a lot of cash for exclusives. How do you think they expect to earn it back? I doubt their plan will be in my interest.

That's a bizarre reading of my sentiments. Elsewhere in this thread I state that I prefer GoG.

If I'm going to suffer DRM, then at least the service should provide value adds that make it worthwhile to me. Reviews, cloud saves, good networking, mod management, et cetera.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19598465

When do you actually think that Steam introduced those features? Hint: not as long ago as you likely think.

And I’m not sure why you expect a new service to have all of Steam’s features from day one...

I'm an old man. I remember. I avoided Steam until cloud saves came along.

So it doesn't have Steam's features. I have no obligation to support a billion dollar corporation compete against another, at the expense of my own quality of experience.

> Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse.

But this is the point: the fact that Epic is making "something worse" might be true now, but will change in the future. This is precisely what happened with Origin for example, at least in the perception of gamers.

So it's worse now. Why should I, as a consumer, silently accept that so a billion dollar corporation can get a foothold against another billion dollar corporation?

> or on the merit of their own games; they are buying exclusivity in order to succeed. [...] Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse.

So? Guess how EA has so many "original" games to begin with? Sounds like people are disgusted because cash bribes sound icky.

It's true, many people have a dim view of those who accept bribes.