This is obviously due to personal choices, so take everything I say here as things I care about - not necessarily that I expect everybody else to care about.

It's not "a different exe". It's got Epic's DRM - meaning it's tied to the Epic Store, its continuous service, etc. If they fold, I lose access to the games I have on it. In all fairness, I don't think they will fold any time soon but it still worries me.

With Steam not as much, for a couple reasons: they're bigger so slightly less likely to fold; they're not publicly listed so they answer to Gabe Newell and don't have any legal requirement to increase share value; they promote and put a lot of time, sweat and money towards Linux gaming; and their store is just generally better than Epic's.

Epic, on the other hand, is actively hostile to Linux gamers: you can't even play Fortnite on it, they have no native store/launcher; and they don't have any of the pros of Steam.

Furthermore, I already own more games than I will probably be able to play in my lifetime, so it's not like I'm "missing an opportunity" by skipping a game that's on the Epic store. :)

It's not that I dislike buying games from another store (I have quite a few from GOG and Itch), what I'm wary about is the loader - especially knowing that Epic is too buddy-buddy with Tencent and both are known to siphon unnecessary amounts of user data.