They're curtailing users' freedom, and subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers.
The specific problem here is that it's locked down, it's impossible to download apps from the websites of publishers and developers, to install them, update them, and conduct commerce in them outside of the store.
In my view, the store, should, must and will, die as a result of industry backlash. Gamers simply cannot trust the platform so long as they give evasive, ambiguous and sneaky answers to questions about the future, as if it's a PR issue. This isn't a PR issue, it's an existential issue.
Their intentions must be judged by their actions, not their words. Their actions speak plainly enough: they are working to turn today's open PC ecosystem into a closed, controlled distribution and commerce monopoly, over time, in a series of steps of which we're seeing the very first.
Oh, sorry, that was Epic's Tim Sweeny talking about UWP and the Windows 10 store. Huh. Weird.
He is of course right. The history of the PC is open-ness. It is, at it's core, an open platform.
It's why you can run any of 17 versions of Windows or 372 flavours of Linux.
It's what allows the PC to support a million different places to buy and download games. Any developer can run their own website, their own store. There are no barriers.
It is a fundamentally different ecosystem to the various console closed-gardens.
The Epic Games Store's approach, of buying up 3rd party exclusives, is totally antithetical to the entire history of PC gaming.