If Epic had spent that 330 million developing first party games, like say Unreal 3, they wouldn't have the ire of half the gaming community, and would be far closer to their goal. Half Life 2 made steam a thing. Fortnite is not half life 2, wrong audience.
Hmm...
I don't know that you can really make that conclusion.
I agree, Fortnite is not HL2. They are two very different games. You may like one more than the other, but that's a personal thing, and the overall numbers don't lie.
I don't think you can argue that Fortnite isn't at least as big as HL2 ever was. Or that Epic isn't investing at least something back into their first-party titles. Could they be doing more first party titles? Absolutely, but they are definitely re-investing in Fortnite and keeping it current.
As far as Ire... hmm. Maybe. There's a very vocal opponent base to EGS - mostly wrapped up with the exclusivity agreements (well, at least since they got the snooping thing fixed early on). If Epic didn't have the EGS, would those people be completely content and happy as clams? Probably not, they would just be bitching about something else somewhere else - that's my theory. It may not be directed at Epic though, which you are correct... probably back to Steam being too bloated, or anti-DRM, or something.
Best I can find, HL2 sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 12M copies. Fortnite has had that many people logged in ~simultaneously~, and is over 20x the user base. Now, Fortnite alone isn't as big as Steam in total - but it's getting close. Best data I could find: in 2018 Fortnite had around 78M active users (not just registered accounts), out of 200M registered accounts, versus Steam's 2020 120M active users (across all games on Steam). There are two years worth of difference in those numbers, I won't extrapolate and guess, I'll just leave the raw data and let you draw your own conclusions. And all of that is without Fortnite even being available in China - one of the largest markets.
If a game like Fortnite can't drive traffic to a storefront, then I don't know what could. It's a juggernaut, like it or not. And Epic hasn't really made many first person titles since .. Gears in '11? or maybe Infinity Blade if you want to count a mobile title that was more or less just released as a tech demo for iOS Unreal engine. Fortnite was very much a lucky accident for them, and had they not just thrown out the Battle Royale as a half-hearted mod it probably would have died a relatively silent death.
I think Epic's issue is that while Fortnite, and all the free titles and exclusives, have definitely driven up EGS installs - it hasn't really translated to sales traffic / revenue. I think it points more to the fact that Epic is paying too much for exclusivity when they get it: which I get, they are seeing that as a loss leader. They get you to install the software because of Fortnite and other free titles. They get you to enter your CC/info the first time because of some exclusive (that they are losing some amount of money on). Then, the gamble for Epic, is that once you have those two steps done - everything else just becomes one-click, and the sales/revenue will start to go as more people continue to use the EGS storefront. It take a bit to build that critical mass.
I won't say that it's a surefire formula - EGS is severely lacking compared to other storefronts. That was a big part of why Origin was finally killed off, and U-Play is probably not far behind. And why Microsoft is pushing hard to get every XBox feature over onto the Windows desktop. All the free stuff and exclusives get you there -- once. But to keep you there, it needs to be a functional tool, not just a launcher.
Right now, IMO really the only people working toward that angle are Steam (who has everything + the kitchen sink), Xbox (still working to get parity with the console, but headed in that direction), and GOG (by tying in the ability to aggregate across multiple storefronts)
