Epic purchases exclusivity whenever it can. Some games were kickstarted with the promise of being available on Steam until Epic gave them a sum of money to make them an Epic exclusive, screwing over their backers in the process. In some of those cases, Epic funded refunds to the backers, in others it didn't.

In plenty of cases this exclusivity also shut down cross platform support of the games. Fundraisers planned macOS and Linux versions of the games, but when Epic purchased exclusive rights they were effectively made Windows exclusives as well (Epic's store is only available on Windows).

And yet the vast majority of games (probably over 99%, but that is a guesstimmate) are not exclusive to one store on the PC.

We have so many options on PC that the few exclusives can be entirely ignored.

for a lot of recent releases you can't, because epic have bought exclusivity

they're complaining about monopolies, while attempting to create them

I don't think "epic bought exclusivity" is quite right. Epic store pays a larger percent of the purchase to developers than any other store. Developers really want you to buy their game on the epic store. That's the real reason epic exclusives exist, developers don't want steam taking their money. Epic gives them an advance as an excuse, but developers would not agree if they didn't want epic store to gain market share.

It's not the same situation. I don't like exclusives either, but you still have the option to install games from other stores or publishers on your PC. The Apple situation is far, far worse.