Yes, in the long run it always is. That’s my point. EGS will probably be successful, and 15 years from now someone will bring up a story about how EGS really infuriated people “back in the day”, and everyone will say it’s irrelevant.
Nobody cares how the service got started. They only care where it goes. It doesn’t make a bit of difference how pissed off everyone is at Epic. It didn’t matter how pissed off everyone was at Steam in the early years. There’s a reason these companies start off by pissing everyone off: it works. There’s no long term downside, and, in the short term, it gets you users. Users don’t show up voluntarily on the early days, and they defend the service once it’s established.
As long as Epic lasts long enough for everyone to later forgive them for their anti-consumer beginning, they’ll be golden. It’s the market standard. The early days will always be viewed as irrelevant. “It was a different time,” people always say. “You can’t compare it to now.”