I personally don't give a shit about whichever store I use for gaming because I have no loyalty to Steam like a lot of the people in this thread. It's just a store and launcher. I wish people would get a grip.

I buy games where it's cheapest, whether that's GoG, Steam or Epic or anywhere else. I use the wishlist functions to make sure I can price compare on sales etc.

Basically Epic like every other publisher has created their own launcher/store.

They aren't trying to compete on features and instead using profits from their franchise to buy market share (e.g. buying store exclusives).

The tone and strategy often comes off as aggressive and hostile.

For example Valve was concerned Microsoft were going to leverage their store to kill Steam. Valve has invested alot in adding windows operability to Linux and ensuring Linux is a good gaming platform. To them this is the hedge against agressive Microsoft business practices.

The Epic CEO thinks Windows is the only operating system and actively prevents Linux support and revoked Linux support from properties they bought.

As a linux user, Valve will keep getting my money and I literally can't give it to Epic because they don't want it.

The issue with Epic isn't as bad as people imply, but it's very real. They produced an incredibly shoddy launcher and store, frequently engage in anticompetitive practices like exclusives, and are happy to frequently update their launcher with new unhelpful bullshit without addressing its core problems.

Me, I'm not upset that Epic exists, even as a Steam user I would not like to deal with them as a true monopoly. But, they give me zero reason to use the store.

The problem is that it's a half-baked product.

I just don't like the launcher. It's absurdly slow and bloated even though it doesn't contain many features. On fast hardware, it takes 30s to open and lags harder than Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. It also eats up my CPU for no reason and has an invasive privacy policy. I try to use the open source Heroic launcher instead, it's much better.

Although recently Steam has moved from slow to within a stone's throw of the launching speed of the Epic Games Store. I'm now looking for an alternative to launch my Steam games.

I just don't use Epic myself but do use Gog and Steam (with the ultra shitty EA launcher and Ubisoft Connect bundled with some of my games) and Playnite has changed everything unifying it all into that single launcher.

Full screen mode in Playnite works fine on my HTPC and as a launcher it does consolidate all of them into one place easily. Worth trying if you use multiple stores.

As for why I'm not using Epic, the whole paying for exclusivity with third parties really didn't appeal to me at all.

If the free offerings from Epic do appeal to you, or if they do better deals on localised currencies (especially if you do struggle to pay for things), don't worry about using their services. I wouldn't want you to deny yourself some entertainment just because other people have issues with them as a business.

There needs to always be multiple game stores to keep prices in check. Steam can not be the only option or prices will skyrocket. See game console stores for reference. I use Playnite to seamlessly bridge my game libraries from Steam, GOG, Epic, Amazon Prime, itch.io etc. This is the way.