Uhm but you’re aware that CS:Source was developed by Valve company behind the Steam?
The same goes true for Unreal Tournament. You want to play it you install Epic installer. That’s fine point. Rockstar and Ubisoft have their own launchers and it’s not an issue.
Issue is that Epic holds the 3rd party games, snatching them from early access etc. effectively limit previously open access.
What games are you talking about specifically here and when? Fortnite was also developed by Unreal by the way.
Also, Epic is not the first company to buy a game + its license and then only allow people to play it via their platform. Counter-Strike was a independent mod back in the days, before Valve bought it. Same goes for Day of Defeat and bunch of others games.
I'm sure we can find even earlier examples of this happening. For all I know, this happens with every digital medium, pretty early on, and it's not news that game companies are greedy (both Valve, Epic and every other AAA studio/company)
Counter-Strike was Half-Life mod, and Half-Life was developed by Valve, so it's still the same developer. And yes, the Epic is the first company on the PC to do that. Console exclusiveness is known fact, but you could _buy_ game outside of the Steam if you wanted to. Epic started to hunt for 3rd party games and lock them in exclusiveness deals.
> Counter-Strike was Half-Life mod, and Half-Life was developed by Valve, so it's still the same developer
That's not how that works. Someone else developed Counter-Strike and released it to the community. Then around ~2000 Valve bought it + license and continued to develop it (with original developers as well).
DotA -> League of Legends was something similar as well. Third-party mods that got bought up by a company and then made exclusive to a particular store.
If you thought that the PC industry is somehow becoming like the Apple App Store, I think you're living in a fantasy. You can still download and run whatever binary you want. On a iPhone, you cannot.
Issue is that Epic holds the 3rd party games, snatching them from early access etc. effectively limit previously open access.