But its launch was anything but smooth. I HATED steam when it launched as a requirement for HL2. I had dialup and the experience was utter shit. I recall being so upset at what a pain it was.

Nothing about epic has ever been as frustrating as the early life of steam.

This is exactly what I think of when people argue that EGS shouldn’t be supported or will definitely fail. These days, most gamers agree that Steam is good. They like Steam. Early on, though, Steam was really bad, and gamers really hated it.

Should gamers have avoided Steam early on, when it sucked and they hated it, so that it would have failed? Or was it better to support it early on so that we ultimately got the Steam that we have now? I dislike both EGS and Steam, but the reality is that the marketplace will probably be better for everyone if EGS survives and actually has a substantial market share to compete with Valve’s market share.

I know everybody hates the exclusives thing, but it’s actually probably necessary and is based on market studies of the games market. There was an economics journal paper years ago that basically argued that exclusives are an equalizer of sorts. That is, if you’re the dominant player in the market, you don’t need to buy exclusives. You’re, as the dominant player, going to get the big games anyway. As a smaller player, though, nothing is guaranteed, and, in general, nobody is ever going to switch platforms just to play the same games on the newer, smaller platform that they were already playing on the older, bigger platform. You’ll need exclusives to get people to switch, even if your platform is as good or better than the dominant one. (I’m not saying EGS is as good – but I’m saying people wouldn’t switch anyway.)