Most people seem to be on board with Steam being their preferred distributor. Any alternatives are met with harsh vitriol- especially ones that are for distributing a a single companies property specifically. Such as EAs origin and Ubisoft’s uPlay (now called Ubisoft Connect).
This is common in the gaming community. Full disclosure: I used to work in the studio that developed and maintained uplay.
One of the games I worked on was an epic store exclusive (or, wouldn’t launch on steam) and it was met with harsh criticism for that. Many players outright said that they wouldn’t buy the game if it wasn’t on steam.
Judging by PC sales, they held true to their word.
I have steam and I absolutely do not need a single provider/distributor (in fact I also have GOG and uPlay, and in no shape steam would be held in any higher esteem). I don't quite see any reason to dislike/resent any other company's way of releasing their products.
Back, years ago the distribution way were tons of 3.5" diskettes, or better yet - transportable hard disk with a jumper switch to slave mode. A lot has changed since, however subscribing to the model that one company has to govern my entertainment model is beyond silly.
I dislike uPlay and Origin and that's why I'm avoiding them (I still have some games on them but something has to be veeery interesting for me to buy it there - I'm even willing to pay more to get same thing on Steam).
Why are we all talking about creating more stores? Shouldn't we opt into creating systems API for stores? That way you could choose store application and have products from all repositories (stores) available in there.
On most Linuxes you add repository and it doesn't matter if you use official package manager, graphical one, or some unofficial bash script. You are able to install same software.
