This is multifaceted, but to start with, nobody cared, there was just apathy since it was another launcher. Collective groan because that means more completely unnecessary game library fragmentation but not much else. Like We've got Battle.net, Steam, GoG Galaxy, Origin, uPlay, Bethesda launcher and more - do we need
another one? That was the basic sentiment prior to December. Fragmentation is an annoyance because it makes it harder to view your whole collection when thinking about what to play, splits up different games in the same series across different places, and forces you to have multiple friends lists across different things, as well as have multiple accounts to keep track of, more icons cluttering your home screen, more overlays in game with different keyboard shortcuts to remember. It's a gnat that you only deal with because you have to, not because you want to.
Then, they started to buy exclusivity. Normally if you don't like EA's games or whatever, you can just ignore their launcher too and buy other games on Steam or GoG or whatever you prefer. Epic instead pursued a strategy whereby third party games, including notably Metro Exodus early on, were suddenly exclusive to their store for 12 months. Exodus had been using Steam to advertise and was even taking preorders, but then it got yanked with under two weeks to launch. This pissed people off royally. They've continued doing it since then, and Phoenix Point was an absolute pisstake because
fig backer who were promised Steam / GoG keys of their choosing were now informed that actually their keys would only be distributed 12 months after launch and that they could have an Epic key in the meantime.
"Where you buy it" is really only a fraction of the story. People like GoG because it's universally DRM free and lightweight. People like Steam because it has an extremely rich featureset unrivaled by any other launcher in the industry. This is not like an arbitrary decision to barrack for a particular sports team, some people make extensive use of Steam's features. But even ignoring that, Epic's store features and launcher features were extremely anemic and to this day are playing catch up to where other launchers were years ago. Regional pricing took months to implement, Cloud saves are coming "3-6 months from now", there is still no availability in China. Epic is telling PC customers to buy on their far worse platform, because you have to either do that or wait a year, sucked in. Having such a bad launcher while also buying exclusivity was salt in the wound.
Many people want this to stop. They do not like it. In summary:
- In general people don't want more stores, there's already plenty
- People don't like using launchers with terrible feature sets
- People don't like companies buying third party exclusivity on already complete or mostly complete games.
