I heard all about that but I really don't think it matters all that much for the vast majority of players. People who are really active in video game communitie

I heard all about that but I really don't think it matters all that much for the vast majority of players. People who are really active in video game communities are indeed likely to be annoyed at this and loudly complain online, but I'm sure the vast majority of casual players won't care massively about any of this. In particular all the online features. I'm in my 30s, do you realize how hard it is to schedule anything with my friends? Paying for exclusives is a bit of a bummer but game development is pretty damn competitive as it is, Epic injecting a lot of money to secure exclusives might actually do some good for indie devs. In my experience most of these exclusivity deals are temporary anyway, so you just have to wait 6 months to a year to get it on your store of choice. That's a fair compromise IMO, especially since nobody bothers to release finished games anymore anyway, so you might as well get the finished version on Steam on sale a year later.