[1_player]

I would definitely pay $10 more to have it under the same launcher I've used for a decade. In fact, there's a couple games out recently I've skipped since they decided to release as Epic Store exclusives.

I don't like monopolies, but I like even less having a dozen game launchers/store/accounts.

[ocdtrekkie]

And in such, you've proven why Epic is not evil for doing exclusives: There's simply no other way to launch a competitor.

[mjevans]

In that respect, Epic is just as evil as Steam, since they don't offer Federation nor the same as support of users of their service as a hosting platform for interaction.

In respect to which platforms are objectively less evil, comparing features and actual interaction with community and developers...

The ONLY way I see Epic as being better is paying developers a larger cut (and as a result some titles selling for slightly less).

Steam is doing more to support /my/ platform (a competitor to Windows), and has done more to further competition in other aspects.

I don't want Discord to be the federation method either, and XMPP ended up failing due to several mistakes and not requiring full Federation and transparent (un-modified, future / client side extension enabling) message passing between end users of different platforms.