Thay's not what the EGS situation is about. Anyone who follows gaming news and the games industry knows that a few games each generation are so big that they sell to a mainstream audience. By mainstream I mean people who enjoy gaming but don't follow gaming news and industry developments as frequently or as closely as the core audience does. This is not a phenomenon unique in gaming, every other entertainment medium has a mainstream audience and a core audience. In every industry, mainstream audiences are generally unaware of or apathetic towards causes and controversies.
So why is this important for the EGS issue? Simply put, EGS will never, ever be able to challenge Steam's dominance by attracting only these games that sell to mainstream audiences. It's impossible.
Now, on its own, this statement might seem absurd to you. "LOL, so Epic will fail even if it attracts every big game on its platform?". Consider this though: In today's PC market, how many big mainstream games are available to Epic? Think about it for a second. How many of each year's Top 20 sellers can Epic add to its platform? EA games are out, Activision games are out, Microsoft games are out, CD Projekt games are out, Ubisoft games can't be exclusive, Rockstar just got its own launcher, Paradox has its own launcher, so... who's left?
This is why
ZhugeEX 's tweet is both right and wrong. People don't care about launchers. Which people? Mainstream people. The thing is that the PC games market has a contingent of core gamers that buy the biggest volume of the games that ARE available to Epic. If you won't take my word for it, here is Epic employee Galyonkin explaining that a small number of people (the platform's core audience) is responsible for the vast majority of sales.
So the situation is this: Epic can only access a handful of very big games that sell to a mainstream audience that doesn't care about launchers. Core gamers, the people that do care about launchers, buy the vast majority of the games that are available to Epic. Epic can't lure in customers with these exclusives and vendor lock them to its platform like consoles do because PC is an open platform. So Epic having a successful game like Borderlands 3 on its platform won't do anything for them unless they manage to convince core gamers to buy from them.
