Sadly "different prices on different stores via different cuts" was always a myth. Steam (30% cut) priced AAA games the same $60 as retail discs (50% cut) when they were launched on both simultaneously. It was the publishers that pocketed the $12 difference, not consumers. Epic (14%) prices the same as Steam (30%). Again, it's the publishers that pocket the $10 difference. If people are "remembering" a time when 2004-2008 $60 AAA games were launched at $60 on disk but only an undiscounted base price of $42 on Steam purely to "equalize" the post-cut $30 publisher take because the publishers said "More profit for us? No thanks!", or when GameStop sold the same games in the High Street at massively different prices to Electronic Boutique next door on launch day, well I'd love to see some examples as I don't remember that at all.

If a publisher decides to fix the base (non sale) price and max sale discount % to be the same on all stores (to prevent the game from dropping too quickly after launch on any one store to prevent the game from entering a devaluation rat-race on all of them), there's simply nothing stores can do to "compete only on price" that have already been fixed by the publisher. And "better customer services" is not much of a differential when "It's been 10 days and Steam / Epic / GOG / Origin still haven't replied to my ticket!" complaints are a regular occurrence on pretty much all digital gaming stores. I'm not saying what Epic is doing is a "good" thing, merely pointing out the chronic naivety of gamers who say "the only competition Epic should be allowed is to aggressively undercut everyone else" when the decision to allow that is often entirely on the publisher, not the store.

Perhaps you should...

Courts would very likely consider all other online gaming stores in that equation.
Even should the courts have the foresight to exclude console gaming and boxed copies, which is no guarantee, if one counts Blizzard, Epic Games, Ubisoft, Origin and Fortnite, all the 3rd party online retailers including Fanatical, GoG, Humble, GreenManGaming, WinGameStore, etc, I doubt Steam is even 50% of the market. The fact these sites sell Steam keys that are hosted on Steam likely means little.

And even with the Steam examples given above, those were the result of negotiation between Steam and that publisher which the publisher agreed to..

Epic is paving new ground in scuminess by inducing multiple breaches of contract. Those between Kickstarter developers and their backers as well as those contracts signed with other storefronts for pre-order sales.

They could very well be sued for these anti-competitive business practices. The first cause that comes to mind would be Tortious Interference with Business Contracts or Relations. Unfortunately that would likely have to begin from a class-action starting from the Kickstarter backers themselves. Since refunds were offered in most cases, I doubt such a lawsuit would arise, but in the case of Shenmue 3 and it's 69,000+ backers, that is entirely possible given they are being denied refunds. Of course Valve could also make the same case regarding signed titles and contracts for games removed during the pre-order stage.

Not Saying that Steam is or isn't a monopoly. Just pointing out the fairly obvious fact that "absolute" monopolies are not what anti-trust law relates to -- probably because they do not exist in reality. The question is whether or not there is undue influence of markets. Microsoft and Google are far worthier candidates for consideration than Steam is, I think.

Given that Google is currently under investigation by the DOJ primarily regarding it's search engine, I'd have to agree. And most people should remember Microsoft being forced to uncouple Internet Explorer...

Just a question... Why would you separate Fortnite from Epic Games?

Same reason I'd separate the Witcher games from GoG. It's a little different when a store both sells 3rd party games and their own products. Not to mention that Fortnite likely still dwarfs the rest of the site in terms of sales. It helps make the point, that there are plenty of developers that are highly successful outside of Steam and they are quite successful, even just talking about the PC market. In short, Steam isn't quite the 90% monopoly some people make it out to be. Even counting 3rd party retailers of Steam keys, it very well may not host 50% of online PC games as related to their sales. And I'm not sure a court or Federal regulatory commission would separate online from physical retail or Mac from PC or PC from Browser games or Mobile when considering if they were a functional monopoly.

The existence and great success of Fortnite or Blizzard independent of Steam is a sign they are not such a functional monopoly. You'd probably have to show something similar to what happened to Microsoft and Internet Explorer where the inclusion of it stifled competitors and their entry into the browser marketplace. While Steam/Valve does compete with Fortnite with games like TF2, it doesn't seem as though their actions are anywhere near as stifling as having IE installed and used by default by WIndows. If TF2 was auto-installed and a Play button for it showed every time one started Steam, that could be a different story.

Where is the kickstarter page where these claims were made?
Your problem is with the claims not exclusivity. People should aim their complaints at whoever was running that more than Epic.
At leas they've been told it will be on Epic. A lot of games forced Steam onto the buyers when they were expecting to put in a disc and play the game normally.

GTA 4 was meant to be a Playstation 3 exclusive until M$ bought it away.

Maybe you should do some investigation yourself...
No, by law it would be Epic who interfered and induced a breach in the contract, thus they would be the proper defendant of that charge. While the developer could be gone after for the breach itself.

But you clearly display your bias as you make excuse after excuse for Epic over what is clearly questionable behavior while you grasp at straws trying to make Steam/Valve sound just as bad for doing far less...

Who cares? Epic, Steam, Uplay, Origin ... they are all the same. One as bad as the other. I don't care who of those DRM-platforms makes how much profit. I just hope that the DRM-free market will continue to exist. The only positive development would be if all DRM-platforms go down, but that is not going to happen.

Well you answered your statement already with your own words:

And yes, the conducted investigations in the United States (I'm not a citizen of this country obviously, as most other people in the world aren't too) are justified, but also should be extended to Epic for its business practices.

What is even the appeal of games like Fortnite anyway?

Insert "am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!" meme here.

I can think of a lot of corporations that are more deserving of anti-trust investigation than Epic is.

Globalism is the real problem, I think, because it's all about finding ways to weaken and circumvent laws that are mostly inadequate to begin with, and corruption is what keeps it going like an unstoppable juggernaut. We need less regulation, that is tougher and stringently enforced, most especially with respect to international capital flows.

Will this do?

The children are DEFINETELY wrong.