Valve was introducing a new kind of an experience with their store, because there were no digital stores for games before that (that were actually used; because no doubt someone in the comments will point out to some obscure digital game store that existed at that time, but no one has heard of or used).

Valve was not fighting an existing store using "stores are bad" as an argument, only to introduce another store. Which is exactly what Epic is doing here.

> Valve was not fighting an existing store using "stores are bad" as an argument, only to introduce another store. Which is exactly what Epic is doing here.

No. You are not arguing in good faith.

Epic has been very clear from the beginning that they would like to viably run a store on the major mobile hardware, they are not claiming that stores are bad in general.

Stardock comes to mind as the Obscure Store That We Probably Haven't Heard Of. But unlike Stardock, Steam was also a DRM platform, the first to implement Carmack's observation ("The Internet is the ultimate dongle.")

In retrospect, it seems to have worked out pretty well for the company and its customers. Gabe Newell has proven to be a more benevolent dictator than his counterparts at Apple and Microsoft.

Their argument is closer to "30 percent cuts are bad" and they are not hypocrites there. Probably something about monocultures too.