As a user, the Epic store is massively inferior to the Steam store on the merits. The UI is worse, the download and update speeds are worse, the interface is worse, the portability is worse, the social layer is worse, almost everything about it is worse. You're acting like they're remotely comparable in end-user experience, which they aren't. Gamers don't necessarily want a monopoly, they just don't want to be forced to use a shittier store to play certain games. If Epic actually put any effort into their store I think there would have been a lot less backlash.

Are you sure that doesn't just reflect a familiarity with Steam more than anything? Because imo Steam has a dog of a UI. Everything is tiny and doesn't scale well on high DPI, common options are buried in menus, or several hyperlinks deep (eg; installing a mod, joining your friend's active game), the video controls are fiddly, management of your friends list is painful.

Most long term Steam users know its quirks by now, but if both Steam and Epic games store were launched today, in their current state, Steam would struggle to get traction.

Nah epic game store has many huge and obvious flaws.

The reviews interface is just links to other websites with little aggregate data. The library does this thing where it greys out uninstalled games making it really hard to identify them. It crashes a lot. The social features aren't as well developed.

Steam's not perfect but it's surely superior. Though I would gladly pay for a game on epic over steam if only because epic has given me so much great shit

Enter the Gungeon, Control, Nioh, Alien Isolation, Darkest Dungeon, Europa, etc.

The Epic Game Store (at least, the program, I dunno about the web interface) doesn't even have _a shopping cart_, you have to buy things individually. No amount of years of Steam ecosystem buy-in are making me say this out of favoritism or familiarity.

I don't want a monopoly. The thing I REALLY don't want though is exclusivity in games. The only possible outcome I see without Steam being the monopoly is other stores trying to win over users via exclusives. We already see this with the Epic Games Store. And since Valve has pretty much shown they are the good guys over the decades I am willing to accept Steam as a monopoly to ensure we don't get a Netflix, Disney+, HBO, Prime, Apple TV+ situation with PC gaming.

Natural monopolies are fine; coercive monopolies are not. As long as Valve offers a better product/service at a cheaper cost than their competition and that's why they have a monopoly, then there is nothing wrong with that.

The people that you want to hear from are the developers of the games that Valve sells through Steam.

And you probably won't hear from them about their experience. And that might cause you to wonder why.

They said Steam and other stores taking 30% is too much. They had different complaints about reviews. They said positive things too. And they understood Steam gave customers more than other stores.

TBF, monopolies are convenient. It's simple & easy to get all your stuff on Amazon nice and quick, but then you get intense concentration of wealth and bad working conditions, for example. There's always this kind of contradiction between the convenience humans want, and the problems that come with any kind of monopoly.

they're veracious consumers.

Nothing much more than that really.