And of all the larger big time game stores, Steam is the most user friendly and the least ****
EA's Origin is no longer Origin and was pretty clunky.
Ubisoft's store may of been the worst. The storefront I think is gone now and they have caved and allow their games to be sold elsewhere.
The Activision/Blizzard store is out there, and it is awful as well.
But they to allow their titles to be sold elsewhere.
The Epic store is pretty average, but I dislike them throwing cash at developers to secure exclusive deals.
I use them just to get the free games they give out pretty often.
They use their Fortnite money to get exclusive deals and give out free games in an attempt to try and build a business away from Steam.
I can respect that, but the store is not nearly as user friendly as Steam and lacks a lot of features.
Valve is by no means perfect, but they have been trending towards being more consumer friendly with things like refunds and products like the Steam Deck.
They are also looking to build a viable alternative to Windows via Linux Proton.
The Windows Store I believe will be Microsoft's attempt at trying to control the very lucrative gaming space.
A build of Linux that actually works for most games out of the box would be a good alternative.
Valve has that in place on the Steam Deck and looks like they may one day release that for general download and use on other systems.
But enough about that.
I realize the crowd here tends to skew on the older side, and many only play a handful of games a year. Maybe they only play OOTP.
And that is okay
Buy the game how you wish, enjoy it.
I just find that Steam is so much more convenient for me, since I do not have to search for the download and then the license key.
I also do not have to worry about unlicensing or how many systems I have the game on.
As long as I have Steam on my system, I have access to every OOTP I have purchased on the platform (and every other game)
I find that to be very convenient since I often using several systems at a time any give day or any given week.
When and if we get true cloud saves, that would be a game changer for me.
May that day come soon!