Games

I'm just there for the free games

There are a few layers to it. I'll start with the legit reasons and hope the jackasses don't read too deep in:

1. EGS was built around the idea of providing what people need/want rather than EVERYTHING. Some of that was truly asinine (no shopping cart for like 2 years?) and some was a conscious choice based on everyone saying they don't want their video game store to be a social media network. Unfortunately... people apparently DO want their video game store to be social media.
2. Every store handles regional pricing and distribution differently and, allegedly, EGS had worse coverage in a few of the countries The Internet actually knows exists.
3. Tim Sweney is a complete and utter dipshit and always has been and it is REALLY hard to not hate everything he touches.
4. EGS rapidly entwined itself with Fortnite because Fortnite makes more than the GDP of some small nations. But we are hardcore gamers so we all hate Fortnite.
5. Sweeney/Epic actually accidentally argued for consumer rights against Apple which, in turn, led to the full force of Apple running smear campaigns against Epic to make sure that we all realized how much we love walled gardens
6. Sweeney/Epic ALSO kind of picked a fight with Steam by pointing out how little developers get from any given sale. Which... because we all love Valve means that Epic are assholes and developers all actively want to strive to get the negotiating power of a Call of Duty or Rockstar.
7. Speaking of. EGS isn't Valve and any alternative is inherently evil because we all love Valve.

So what was a mediocre store with a lot of free games and a tendency to give developers a giant sack of money for one year of exclusivity became The Devil.

People are going to list all the features Steam has over Epic, ignoring that Steam has had ~22 years to get to where it is. The original Steam experience was garbage, and lots of us older gamers knew what would happen and hated that Steam would be the primary catalyst to killing off physical media for PC games back in the mid-2000s, especially as broadband internet access was becoming far more accessible.

Don't get me wrong, Valve has done alright so far in terms of game ownership, but once Gabe dies/retires, it's only a matter of time before some greedy fucks force Valve to go public and the pure enshittification process begins.

I do both PC and console gaming, and I’ve personally never gotten the Epic hate. As a store it’s not amazing but it’s fine. I will generally go to Steam first but I’m also not going to boycott a game just because it’s Epic exclusive.

another player to try an compete with Steam

Here is the mistake. It does not trying to compete. It only tries to catch as many fish in its bucket as possible, while leveraging (burning) Fortnite money.

It's a wasted effort, and it will never come close to Steam like this. It may even die along with Fortnite, or degrade further.

First, the EGS software is really bad. It’s slow, clunky, a pain to navigate, and is missing loads of basic features that Steam has had for decades.

Second, rather than improving their offering to make it more competitive and appealing to consumers, they’ve utilized coercive tactics like exclusivity to force adoption rather than earning it on merits.