The way Epic handled competition was by strong-handing exclusives constantly without actually providing a better service. Last time I bought a game from Epic, it didn’t even have a cart system to buy games in bulk. Couple that with the tolerance of cryptocurrency/blockchain and acquisitions of sites like Artstation and Bandcamp, and yeah - people have reasons to not like Epic. I’ve heard stories of people getting locked out of their banks because of the lack of a cart and they were buying a lot of games in a short amount of time. I’ve also heard stories about people’s Epic accounts getting breached because of Fortnite BS.
And I’m saying this as someone who uses multiple launchers. I hated Steam back in the mid-2010s (skipped the middleman and bought GTAV from Rockstar directly) and they were in quite a bad rut with Steam Greenlight and the paid mods fiasco. People were rightfully loudly critical of Steam and at a time, Valve really did not deserve taking a 30% cut. They’ve done a lot since then to recoup that lost trust and deserve the 30% cut, Proton and the Steam Deck being a massive part of that for many people.