aha, I think we are coming at the term "walled garden" from opposite ends.

For a developer I agree with you, it is not a walled garden, they can sell games however they want, epic is one option who happen to be the only one that pays, out of all the stores, 3rd parties for exclusivity.

For a customer it is a walled garden for those exclusive games in that I cannot play those games without having to install and sign-up for the Epic Games Store because they paid to make them exclusive (again, permanently or temporarily).

As a customer, if the game I'm about to buy was able to be polished because of additional funding/saving, I'm interested in the game being exclusive.

As a customer, if the game company has better chances of surviving paying their employees a decent wage, making quality games that I can enjoy, I'm interested in the game being exclusive.

As a customer, if the market could have more store options other than Steam so prices can be more competitive and developers can choose better deals, I'm interested in games being exclusive.

Also as a customer I can decide to just not play the game because of exclusivity and move on.

Why is Mario not on Steam? Why is The Last of Us or Uncharted not on PC? Yeah it sucks games are not ubiquitous but it's not always in the best interest of game developers to distribute their games everywhere and I think it should be perfectly understandable from the point of view of customers.

Also, from the point of view of Epic, I guess it's expected they want something in return for funding projects.

I don't get the anger people direct towards Epic when in fact they are doing a good thing for the market that very few companies would have the power to do.

> I don't get the anger people direct towards Epic when in fact they are doing a good thing for the market that very few companies would have the power to do.

I guess it comes down to if you think having another game store & launcher installed in your PC is free (not speaking just monetarily here) or not. If you think it is free then there is no downside.

If you think it is not free: * Another app to manage * Another company to syphon data * Another place you you have to register a credit card * Another place where you have to add your friends or hope there is cross-store play

Then you will be annoyed that they have artificially restricted access to a game you could otherwise have bought directly or on your store / launcher of choice, e.g. Steam, GOG, with the only limitation being what the the developer wanted to release on.

Now I think EGS is mostly time-based exclusivity (I think there are maybe single digit permanently exclusive games on EGS) but the point still rankles. You can argue "Short term pain" (exclusives, assuming that stays short-term) for long term gain (more store competition) but that is not a guarantee.

> Yeah it sucks games are not ubiquitous but it's not always in the best interest of game developers to distribute their games everywhere and I think it should be perfectly understandable from the point of view of customers.

Many people, myself included, do not want the console exclusivity wars to be something that migrates to PC where there is 0 need for it (i.e. you are not developing your game on two completely different console architectures which adds to cost, maybe adding some store integration code only.) Especially paid exclusives.

I understand your position, but that's not what the term means. A walled garden is when one party controls the media or distribution of content on a given platform. If you make a PC game, EGS has no control at all over how you distribute it. If you then decide to sell it exclusively through them, that doesn't make them a walled garden - you had control of how your game got distributed, not them.

Fair enough, looks like my understanding of the term was not the common one.

There is no difference between Epic or any other game store in this regard. The PC is no monopoly and no walled garden.

I am not sure in which regard you think there is no difference based on what I said. So to confirm where I think there is a difference:

Epic is the only PC store that will pay developers to restrict consumer choice by limiting distribution to their store (temporarily or permanently) only on what would otherwise be a competitive marketplace of stores on the PC platform. No other game store does this.