I mean, I get that they want to hurt Steam, but there's no logical reason why Epic wouldn't also negotiate the price. Their endgoal must be to train people to buy on their store, that's where the money is. No one will jump at those crazy prices, that will turn off all but the most die-hard fans.
I can kinda understand Square here, they know they'll get huge sales a year later by putting all games at a "50%" sale when it releases on Steam, but that means Epic is paying a premium to have the game in their store for a year, with a deliberately unappealing price tag.
Between this and their harebrained legal battle against Apple, Epic's business leadership come across like absolute buffoons. Tim Epic might know how to program video game engines, but he's a big dumb dumb when it comes to running a business..