This particular instance is even more funny because Epic financed the game. It being exclusive to their platform is pretty normal. Where's the criticism that Fortnite isn't on Steam? Or that CSGO 2 isn't on EGS? It doesn't exist because people know this is fine.
I don't have that much of a problem with that. Like I said earlier in the thread, I used to even play Paragon on the epic launcher (before it was the Epic Game Store, it used to be a smaller launcher just for Unreal Engine, Fortnite, Paragon and Unreal Tournament). Sure I would have preferred to play it on Steam, but it wasn't, so I played it there, it was their own game and I was okay with that. The same way I played some EA games on Origin, or played Genshin Impact even if it's not on Steam.
What I don't like about Epic is that they extended that beyond their own IPs, that's completely different, and since they don't make any effort in improving their platform, we're stuck with subpar experience compared to what it would be on Steam with more quality of life features and things we're used to.
The biggest example for me is Kingdom Hearts. I love Kingdom Hearts, and I'm really sad that the series isn't on steam. Why? Because Kingdom Hearts isn't just a game that I play once and be done with and move on. It's something I go back to very regularly, I would love to have all my stats on steam given how important these games are for me. I also create mods for kingdom hearts (
like this ) I spend a lot of time on this, and it would be a lot more convenient for me if it was on steam. The games would also have a lot more visiblity, and steam workshop would make it even better for mods.
The steam deck is also an important new thing to take in consideration. It's almost impossible to play these games correctly on the Deck, a lot of people gave up on the idea because of how problematic it is. This wouldn't be an issue if this was on Steam.
Steam isn't just a "launcher" for me, it's really my main app on my pc, I always have it open, I use it to talk text chat with friends more than discord actually, I use the forums, the screenshot sharing features, it's almost like the second part of my OS, like people are on their consoles with all the different features, so yes, if I can, I prefer to have my games on there. I can do exceptions, I did before on several occasions, I played Mirror's Edge Catalyst on Origin, I played overwatch on battlenet, paragon on epic, different things like this, but what Epic does now is different, it doesn't concern just their own published games, which would be easier to understand for me.
I wouldn't be upset about Alan Wake 2 being exclusive to the epic game launcher if the context was different, here it's just the store in general that I have problems with, not their own published products. I also use Unreal Engine, I don't hate Epic as a whole, I just don't like their store and exclusivity policy.
