[Tanoc]

And tying back into the article and the former parent company involved with Bandcamp, that's precisely why The Epic Games Store has failed so quickly. Epic changes policies to get the most explosive expansion whenever possible, only for things to collapse because the actual users are the support structure. Epic forces exclusives, Epic very heavily try to stop games from storing data locally, Epic can revoke your purchase at any point, Epic can ban you from EGS and thus all access to your games thanks to their DRM, and Epic has no rules other than "no porn" leading to a flood of shovelware, asset flips, and NFT/crypto scams.

And the thing is, Epic are following industry norms for this. All digital storefronts are trying to enforce the same sorts of policies. Get as much "stuff" in front of as many people as possible and have them fork over money to rent that "stuff" with tenuous if any protections for their purchase. Valve really are the outliers in this, and the only others I can think of that do what they do are Itch.io and Bandcamp, one a tiny player catering to a lower market and the other essentially the only survivor in their particular niche. Gamejolt and Soundcloud aren't even really competitors for each of them respectively.