Honest question:
How much money do they have now? How long can Epic keep doing this? With games like Apex Legends, Fortnite can`t be their cash cow forever? And how wealthy is Valve compared to Epic? Gabe Newell is worth 4 billion himself.
You would be surprised i think how little money is necessary. A guaranteed return can be very attractive for a dev as games are usually a very risky enterprise.
Minimizing risk is hard and when you see Epic there, giving you money for a timed exclusive, it can be very tempting.
People fail, again and again, to put themselves in devs shoes.
Thinking only about themselves, i find very insulting the behavior of gamers thinking they are somewhat owed a game that was announced.
In the end the game is all that matters for me, if its good -> buy, if its bad -> don't buy.
Right now, Epic is effectively subsidising these games, paying Devs to make them.
For all we know some of theses game wouldn't even have come out if not for the money Epic gave them.
All the feature that Steam has, it was built over years and years of development , it was forced in by government sometimes (Hello EU laws), or by gamers(a lot).
There is No reason to think the Epic game store won't get there, that's assigning Evil intent or incompetence (both of which i have yet to see from Epic)
Don't forget that Steam and Epic game store are both Platforms.
Their first clients are
DEVS, not GAMERS. The business is taking a cut.
Just like your are the product when you use google, you are the product when you use Steam or EGS.
The main role is to distribute games and the bell and whistles are useless if the games aren't there.