Wow, that's a terrible argument. "Hey you used to have three+ places to buy this game that you were really looking forward to, now they're unavailable and you can only go to this one place to get it. They support developers, by giving them a larger cut, but you will still pay full price. Or you can wait a year for the game to be available at those other places. Don't like it? Don't buy it." That's not consumer choice. You really have no idea what anti-competitive means. There are many scenarios that describe anti-competitive business behavior and what Epic does with pre-orders is just one of them. Whether they remove the ability of one specific competitor, or many to sell the same product, it's textbook anti-competitive behavior. It doesn't matter what their public justification for doing this is, it's anti-competitive. There is no argument you can make otherwise.
You speculate quite bit without evidence. There are many people who haven't spent a penny on the Epic store, they just collect the free games. That's exactly what they don't want. There are also people who are going to buy a particular game no matter what, whether it's on EGS, Steam, Windows Store, etc. But there are also many people who now won't buy the game at all, pirate it instead, or will wait a year for the exclusivity to end on the EGS simply because they don't like what Epic is doing.
But you didn't have three+ places to buy said content before EGS either. You're living in fantasy land here. GOG has its exclusive content, for example in the shape of its retro gaming catalog that is all made to run on recent OS'es. Steam has a certain form of exclusivity through its long term investment in distribution, developers simply find it first because its too big to ignore, and generally only release on Steam because of the framework it offers them. At the same time, this enslaves them to the 30% cut. Steam also carves out a form of exclusivity through VR content. EGS is now another option for each of these developers. Thát is where the competition is happening. Its not a competition for us consumerrs, its one between publishers and distributors. We can just sit on the sidelines, eat popcorn and enjoy the rain of free content that is falling off the competition train as these giants fight their battle. If store A has a discount, we can enjoy that discount over there, and when Store B fights back, we can go to store B. You're not restricted in any way.
Steam is going to have to make a move if EGS is here to stay and so far, even just riding on the prolonged Fortnite success, they can keep doing as they do for a loooong time.
You describe the
existence of another competitor to the market for distribution, as anti-competitive. It is twisted logic, and you're free to think otherwise, but this is how the market works. There is no law preventing EGS doing what it does, just as there is no precedent for what, for example, Apple and Google do on their platforms, locking everything down with a hefty distribution fee and buying up start ups left and right. In that sense, EGS is playing it very nicely, giving each developer full freedom in what they want to push on the store, and supporting them financially in doing so.
As good as GOG is for retro gaming and 'ownership' of games, EGS is for the publishers under its wing and for diversity in games as a whole. You can either see it or you don't. It is what it is, boycot all you like, its going to be your loss, and yours alone.