If the allegations were just about steam keys, that would be one thing, but it looks like they’re leveraging their large market share to essentially fix prices on other stores, even outside keys. For example, even though Epic charges a much smaller cut, 12% vs Steam’s 30%, publishers are prohibited from selling at a lower price on Epic (or Steam will delist their game, blocking the vast majority of the game’s potential audience).

I personally don’t find buying a publisher to make some game exclusive to be all that scummy. Is it really so different from Warcraft being exclusive to Battle.net ? But I’m not to try to convince you that my reasons are more valid. I respect your reasons, I just ask you to also respect mine.

Why does the reason for the exclusivity matter?

You don’t like Epic because their store is not fully featured. I understand that. I’m concerned about Valve because, among other things, certain damning allegations made in their recent class action lawsuit.

You can much more easily avoid Epic because of exclusives than I can avoid Steam.

From a consumer’s point of view, does it matter if the exclusive is de facto or de jure? If I have no choice but to do business with Valve and Steam to play a game on PC, it seems to me that that game is a Steam exclusive. And there are thousands of Steam exclusives, but only a handful of Epic exclusives.