The first part of that could be a good thing, if it would be developers, not "content owners", and some generic rules would apply that favor the customer. I mean, hey, if it'd all be DRM free, could also be purchased if you don't have a card, and of course I'll keep shouting about banning any regional price hikes too, why not but stuff straight from the dev really?
But, as you say, it's a matter of being able to build the infrastructure, so if only big studios will do it, it'll be as you say, and in fact it already is in parts. Gloomy prospect, but then again what isn't in this world? :/

ok why would i wanna go to say cnn or fox news through GOG theres no point, if you wanna browse the internet get a browser theres no need for launchers to have them

DRM free propaganda?

the point is that launchers already are browsers... and the overlay is linked to them. so the difference between, say steam or galaxy, is that if you open up the overlay in steam to search for a walkthrough or hints, you are not limited to only the steam forums, but can search wider as well. in galaxy you have not got that option, but need to either limit yourself to the gOg forums, or alt-tab / close the game to open another browser.

The Division 2 is coming to Epic’s game store instead of Steam. https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18174004/the-division-2-ubisoft-epic-game-store-launch

Well that's surprising. I wasn't expecting major companies to start picking sides on this one so quickly. If I was an executive at Steam this news would make me very nervous.

Security flaws are still being discovered in Chromium (last one was Magellan in December i think). I doubt GoG wants to deal with those issues so they lock the browser to GoG. Steam deals with it by saying "We had a disclaimer, you suck, ha ha!". GoG can't really get away with it so easily - especially since they are bound by strict EU consumer laws rather than looser US laws.

I guess this is Ubisoft finally taking the decision to go (largely) on their own. It'll certainly make more sense to buy it on Uplay rather than Epic since you'll be needing the Uplay client anyway. I guess the margin is low enough that it doesn't hurt to have it on Epic store as well.

That's probably a good assessment. This allows them to go all in an uplay but still offer an alternative that is low cost to them to be able to say they are offering PC users an alternative to uplay.

Ubisoft could have gone on their own long ago, as EA did. Having their own store (with a 100% cut), the sole reason for selling their games on Steam was the huge market it has. And that's why I don't see the point in selling The Division 2 on Epic store instead of making it an Uplay exclusive.

Like I said.... they may just be using Epic as a secondary distributor for the PR implications. If they use them than they can say they are being consumer friendly by offering a uplay alternative.

I guess it depends. Do they have different DLC/In-game purchases terms? If they don't have to part with that then this is probably similar to selling the basegame for $5 a couple of months after release, a way to spread the potential for microtransactions.

Maybe they see benefit in appealing to fortnight players at a low cost

Anyone would understand (and even expect) Ubisoft to make their games exclusive to Uplay long ago. I don't think it's a PR move. But I agree with Pheace:

You may have a point. Time will tell.

i want to say something good about epic. whether or not you like fornite(save the world does exist) or their game launcher agreement terms i love them for making the console companies sweat. microsoft, not so much but sony got absolutely handled. that whole issue a while back where sony players reported seeing game user names without spaces(psn names cant have spaces). epic denied anything but pretty much said that cross platform play could happen with 'the flip of a switch'.

I had a good chuckle at this today, when I read some comments under a news post about this on a Polish gaming site, and found some people panicking about Steam going under and them losing all their games :D Now, Steam is obviously not going down because of this, not nearly, but it's just amusing to see it suddenly dawn on these Steam zombies that perhaps having games tied to a service with no DRM free backup is not such a bright idea after all :D