Dusk: Unpopular opinion: I'd rather pay Valve 30% and put up with their de facto monopoly than help Epic work towards their own (very obviously desired) monopoly
There are so many companies that have all the pieces to make good competition to Steam but their greed gets in the way. Microsoft in particular should have been a shoe-in for it, but GFWL was an embarrassing failure, the WIndows store is rubbish and insists on a new file format that (at least in the past) caused all kinds of issues for games, and now their Game Pass service has no focus on a buying element. This is without going into both Amazon and Google tripping on the starting line when it comes to getting in the gaming space. A launcher that was tied in with Amazon's web store would be a really quick way to get a lot of people in naturally.
I really wish more people used GoG to where it could be a competitor. Unfortunately the game selection is much lower due to companies turning their noses up at no DRM. Also, I will admit that I tend to buy things on Steam in favor of GoG due to a lot of the features Steam has.
I'll never buy another game on Microsoft's store ever again. And this is AFTER all that GFWL bs. Bought Forza 7 and it refuses to install. It did once before but now it says it's done immediately and is nowhere to be found. I've tried everything short of a reinstal, which I will not do
I have a lot of problems with them too. I gave Game Pass an honest shot once, but could never get any games to run or install properly. Can't imagine the normal store front is any better.