[ynx]

DirectX carried the games industry forward because there weren't alternatives. OpenGL was lagging, and Vulkan didn't exist yet. I hope everyone moves to Vulkan, but DX was ultimately a net positive.

[pjmlp]

There were others, there is this urban myth that games consoles used OpenGL and only Windows was the outlier.

Even Mac OS only adopted OpenGL after the OS X reboot, before it was QuickDraw 3D, and Amiga used Warp 3D during its last days.