Nah. Maybe if Epic had started with this instead of all the bullshit we got. And a reasonably up to date store. And Tim Sweeney avoiding Twitter. Maybe? But nah, that ship has sailed.
'But devs.' Hard to believe that you haven't gotten the gist of why they're hated by so many after the last 1.5 years. It's not like there's a lack of reading material out there. Or on here.
As a US customer I struggle to see how Epic can induce anyone to hate. This is a 100% sincere question, but if you want to ignore it, fine. I'll just have to make some assumptions about your opinion.
I'm assuming you hate Epic because they sign exclusivity deals with developers that lock their games to the Epic Games Store on PC for a set period of time (and sometimes indefinitely if not permanently, although this seems to be the minority).
I'm assuming this upsets you because you want the "freedom" to purchase the game on other platforms such as Steam.
Since you're not offering any other points, I don't know how to respond to any specific arguments you might have that support your opinion. I'll do my best to rebut the obvious ones until you elaborate further:
Epic Games Store is an application that is free to download, and an Epic Games Store account is free to make. There is a very low barrier to entry for access to the games they sell. I will concede that I have previously heard their regional pricing & local currency support is not great, however I am in the US and can only speak to the standard here. That's not to discount people in other countries who might have a harder time accessing Epic exclusives, it's just to limit the scope of this discussion.
My point is that there is hardly anything "exclusive" about the Epic Games Store. It's a free piece of software that mostly does the same thing as Steam: allows you to purchase games and play them on a Windows PC.
I won't go into detail about how the deals Epic are offering developers are often in their best interests. I'm not a dev and I'm assuming you aren't either, so I guess we should approach this as consumers. As a consumer, I'm not sure how Epic is worse than Steam. Pricing for launch games seems to be the same as it would be on Steam (in the US), therefore I don't feel as if I'm paying an "Epic tax" of any sort. Steam's most important functionality (other than game distribution) is cloud saves, and Epic seems to support those without issue. I'm curious to know what other killer features Steam offers that people feel upset Epic hasn't implemented yet (other than the regional pricing I mentioned earlier).
So why not just sell the game on all store fronts, instead of exclusive to Epic? Because people will just do what's convenient and buy the game on Steam. Epic doesn't have a reasonable way to break into the market otherwise.
At the end of the day I don't see how any of Epic's exclusivity deals hurt me as the consumer and end user of the product. I just see a lot of complaining about exclusivity being somehow bad, without much evidence to support it.
I look forward to hearing your points, however. I had to make a lot of assumptions. Don't just point me to a completely different thread either. Feel free to link me to individual posts if you want, but please don't assume this thread comes with pre-requisite reading.