> It's not like there were Wallmart exclusive games, right?

Either you’re younger than me or you’ve forgotten about the pre-order content exclusives from different stores.

If physical retailers had the marketshare that online distribution now has I’m sure they would have done exclusive games. If you have smaller game devs and no cost of disc manufacturing (ie download only) its easier to make exclusivity deals.

> Either you’re younger than me or you’ve forgotten about the pre-order content exclusives from different stores.

This has basically no bearing to the actual game access. While now, buying in a certain store means a very limited selection of titles, which is unlike anything ever experienced in physical retail. So, bad analogy.

Yes, makes my blood boil that Stadia is hogging the rights to stream Rockstar games, but you can't import them. So even though I have purchased them, I need to buy them again.

I highly doubt that devs are the ones who make the decision to put everything behind the walled garden of an entirely separate app store. Although I would agree that devs do shoulder some of the blame for relying on electron and other such technologies for building these things.

> who make the decision to put everything behind the walled garden of an entirely separate app store

Devs or Publishers, but devs can also self-publish when they are indies anyway. Epic Store is famously buying timed exclusives - we have seen ShenMue 3 for example exclusive for one year on EGS depiste a kickstarter campaign where they promised a release on Steam on Day 1. Devs/Publishers were clearly to blame there: they decided to ignore their supporters and go for the big bag of Epic money instead.

> It's not like there were Wallmart exclusive games, right?

It doesn't matter too much, but there actually have been... Nintendo's Chibi-Robo Park Patrol was a WalMart exclusive game in the US. (in 2007)

A big problem with the comparison between big box stores and app stores regarding exclusives is: I can go to Walmart, buy my “Walmart Exclusive(tm)”, and then not go back. Chibi-Robo! doesn’t require I play in Walmart, and, in fact, will run just fine on my DS everywhere. OTOH, for an Epic exclusive, I can’t buy (read: license) the game and then never use the Epic launcher. Because every time I want to play “Epic Exclusive(tm) #9001”, I need to have the Epic Store running.

> When some games are "exclusives" to a certain store, if you want to play such games you end up having to install every store in existence

Then don't! You don't need that game. If you and other gamers want to make a stand against the crazy number of stores just refuse to install them. Unless you do that the store owners know your complaints aren't going to amount to a thing.

> Then don't! You don't need that game

I think you fail to understand conflicting interests. Devs and Publishers do everything to hype up game releases, and Store Owners buy exclusivity to bring people to their platforms. Even if I restrict my own choice, my vote ultimately does not matter: these perverse incentives are at play, and make life suck for every end user involved.

I find the hassle of having multiple game launchers installed to be pretty insignificant. In exchange, developers have more freedom regarding where they're willing to publish, and have the opportunity of exclusive deals that bring in more money and could reasonably be put back into the content of a game.

Also, as players we occasionally get games at much lower costs than normal (sometimes even free), which seems to be a benefit we wouldn't get to the same extent if multiple storefronts weren't competing.