The huge money loss was always apparent but more so when Epic willingly gave out numbers and showed flat numbers in 2020 vs 2019, in a year where literally everyone else had explosive growth due to the pandemic. But what it really shows is the key problem Epic had from day 1: What's the reason to use EGS over Steam? The only logical answer was always disruptive things like paid moneyhats. Even EGS defenders would admit that was the only way they could compete with Steam.
So this brings me to the question I asked people in 2018 but for some reason it's treated as some kind of taboo in many places: Why does Steam need competition? Everyone always uses the tired adage of competition is always good but no one wants to really examine what that statement means. The implication of competition being good is that it will spur a war between companies to benefit consumers. But in reality this only really happens when the industry in question is largely stagnant, as in one or a couple of companies control it but don't really do anything with that power and usually make the user experience frustrating (like american ISPs for example, or Intel in the CPU market).
Was this happening to PC gaming? Think back to late 2018, were people going around saying "man I like PC gaming but steam just makes it too much of a pain in the ass"? No, people were happy and generally only concerned with late ports arriving or possibly never arriving. Was Valve doing nothing with their so-called monopoly? No, as has been proven constantly they bring out many new features every single year...it's just that they don't communicate that well and sometimes it's features you may not care about (so naturally that means they don't count).
So why did PC gaming need a massively disruptive and aggravating force? If the only way EGS or anyone can compete is by doing moves that aggravate consumers, that tells me that the industry was already in an extremely healthy place prior to their arrival. It was the answer to a non existent problem. I'm sure all of you have seen defenders say "well they can never compete or catch up with steam on features so they have to do this". That's not a clear sign that EGS is unnecessary?
Too often the online dialog (not here, in general I mean) gets emotional and hostile and you get accusations of being a fanboy or whatever, but for me the EGS thing was always a question of "what can you do for me" and their answer was "uhh idk take away your purchasing options I guess?" And that's all the answer could ever be, because their existence was never needed in the first place.