You'd think people just took their first class of economics with the blind it's competition! statements.
New platforms that do not try to compete by providing better services, but rather through exclusivity is terrible competition, and only hurts customers. Closed-platforms (i.e. consoles) that force you into using their one (paid) service, one store, approved accessories, and largely compete by exclusivity nonsense is terrible competition.
And we have ample evidence for that.
E.g. when console platform holders with a captive audience and exclusive distribution of games require payments to play peer-to-peer online games, people shrug, maybe moan a bit, and then pay up since they don't have an option.
If you try that on a marketplace with actual competition,
where you can get the same game on different software platforms, it fails miserably. As we saw.
The power there is exactly in the same library being available across different platforms on the same hardware, and paying for game exclusivity takes away that power from gamers.
Competition would look like a platform that offers new competitive features to their customers, and does not force people's hands with exclusives, even among their first-party games. This is GOG.
Steam is the best gaming platform by far because it offers the best features to both customers and developers. Despite being at the top, they've continued to release incredible features that are far ahead of any competitors (on the PC and outside of it). And to top it all of, they've insisted on open-platform policies such as allowing developers and third-party storefronts to sell keys taking no cut that ironically create better competition for customers than what these other (vast majority) competitors have managed to do.
Exactly.
Epic: We're announcing a storefront with extremely competitive revenue splits, and we're also making explicit statements about our intention to compete with other storefronts to change the market for the better for developers large and small alike.
They also made explicit statements about their intention to buy store exclusivity.
Which is the exact opposite of being competitive in a sense which is positive for customers.
They also stated that e.g. their store will allow publishers to decide whether or not their games can be rated/reviewed by customers.
Which is an indication of a power balance shift from gamers to publishers I really don't appreciate.
