building an alternative means dealing with breaking into what is effectively a monopoly, and you can see how successful that’s been for Origin/Epic/whatever

Yeah it’s not successful for Origin or Epic because their idea of breaking a monopoly is to strongarm their own pseudo-monopoly by bringing Console Wars to the PC, which is one of the dumbest ideas possible. If Origin or Epic ever made their service good instead of just walling off exclusive games and forcing users to use their obviously terrible software (a move which creates the most negative possible feelings toward your company) they would be a lot more successful.