And yet consoles still have physical game copies available all these years later. Why is PC so much different?

It isn't. You can still buy physical copies of PC games, mostly AAA tho, but nobody does it anymore. Also, there are consoles that are delivered without a cd drive, so they are digital only.

And I’m not saying to be happy that Epic is competition, I’m saying that if GOG dies, you’ll only really have Steam and Epic

To be fair, steam is my platform of choice now anyways because of their awesome linux support.

I 100% believe Valve will go full on enshitification mode. I wouldn’t have to worry as much if I could still buy physical fucking copies of modern PC games

Certainly a worry, however, in case they do become shitty, I'll just download a bunch of cracks for my games and leave the platform.

Steam didn’t start off where they’re at now, they’ve had 20 years with an entire company dedicated to developing it.

I don't care tho?

Seriously, this is the worst argument to me. Why should I as a consumer care about that? If someone sells a flip phone now, you're not going to say: "Oh man samsung had such a big headstart obviously their phones are better". If a company enters a new space, they have to compete on the same level, not on the level of 20 years ago.

Fuck Epic for buying exclusive rights for third party games, but in this specific context, it is their game, so it is what it is

Ye agree, it is their game rn so they can do that. But a majority of games weren't.