I guess the "evidence" since you're so keen on it would be the fact that last time I checked devs weren't pulling their games off of Steam during their sales after suddenly finding Valve selling them in ways which they hadn't agreed upon, which is what is happening right now on EGS...
Apparently that means I think Valve/Steam are heroes?
Of the others you list the only service that has ever really been vilified like that was the Windows Store, when Microsoft briefly tried to pull a pretty similar move to what Epic are doing now (and they then backed down). Uplay and Origin people tend to just deal with because it's not surprising them wanting to distribute their own work and they often don't prohibit the sale of their games on other platforms
I didn't mean to specifically focus on yourself. Your quote allowed me to express how I personally felt. It feels to me that a lot of people in the PC gaming community consider direct competition to Steam as bad, and when it happens always take the view that Steam is always the good actor and the competition is always the bad actor. It's never that black and white.
In regard to the other stores other than the Windows Store (which you've covered above), Uplay received backlash but was largely mitigated by the fact that Steam users were still able to purchase those games via Steam. Even though launching them still meant you went via Uplay.
Origin recieved the biggest backlash of them all. Google seems to do a good job of ignoring old internet pages, but I've found this 7-year old discussion on GameSpot -
https://www.gamespot.com/forums/sys...hy-do-so-many-people-hate-it-28820042/?page=1 The quotes have screwed up over time but it's still readable.
And what an interesting read it is. 7-years ago gamers where complaining about the same things about Origin which they are about EGS. Some choice quotes from that link:
The problem is that it's yet another stand alone applicaiton that we have to run in the background, except it comes with NONE of the perks of Steam. It's like Steam 1.0, when it first came out. It sucked, and so does Origin. If origin wanted to compete with Steam, it needed to come right out fo the gate with a ton of features - at the very least the same one found in Steam.
It's 2011. EA is a much, much larger company than Valve - they have no excuse for not launching with more features in this day and age.
It's anti-consumer, anti-convenience. People want to have all their games in one place.
Origin survived (dispite many commentators claiming it would fail and EA would return to Steam) and PC gaming survived. The same will happen with the Epic store. Things will all blow over and we'll carry on. Then another store will turn up in another 5-10 years and it will start again