I mean that’s the same side that steam is using their monopoly for, too

Steam only has a monopoly because they have the absolute feature advantage. There is no other launcher that offers all of the features Steam does. Steams Monopoly is a natural one, it formed because every other choice was worse and developers don’t want to put the game on another 30 stores where it won’t sell anyway. Epic is trying to create an artificial monopoly where everyone uses Epic because the developers literally cannot sell the game anywhere else (at least for a time).

Steam: Developers voluntarily restrict themselves to that single store out of convenience (99% of the customer base is there, why bother with another store). The customer base is there because the store is feature rich. Epic: Developers are artificially restricted to that single store. The customer base is there because they can’t get the game anywhere else.

Given the above I predict that, unless Epic gets their Store feature equal to Steam (which won’t happen imo), Epic will have to continue forcing exclusivity indefinitely. The moment they stop forcing people to use their store their customers will migrate back to Steam for a better experience.