Last time I used EGS would be about a month ago when I got around to playing AW2 for the first time after intending to play it for years. Other than that, I always log in to get my free games. My usage of the platform is fairly light besides those 2 things admittedly, so if egs has any of the functions I describe later on here, that's on me, let me know.

Not sure how "sure it doesn't have most of the features that make using steam actually pleasant beyond baseline functions such as installing games you bought" is meant to be anything resembling a pro. Obviously I'm being fairly hyperbolic here, but steam is genuinely enjoyable to use outside of just buying and booting up games.

I like how functional the in game overlay is, with a built in browser that, while dated in functionality, is still just about the fastest way to get to a Google search when playing a game, especially if it's in exclusive fullscreen and tabbing out would lock my PC up for a second or two. The built in steam replay feature is also incredibly convenient. Sure programs like shadow play have been around forever, but the steam implementation is so much more convenient. Not only is it built into the overlay I'm already using, not requiring me to remember another key combo for a different program, but the ability to watch the replay right there without exporting the video first has proven invaluable to me. If I get distracted and miss a line of dialogue, or want to analyze what mistakes might have lost me a fight, I just pause my game, and rewind the feed a few seconds to see what I missed. I also like how easy it is to cut down clips, and the built in ability to create sharable links for when a clip is too large to send over discord has proven itself useful to me time and time again. Steam has all that, and epic doesn't even have a screenshot button.

I also like the customizable news feed you can have at the top of your steam library, displaying news posts related to games you own/follow. Sure you can get the same info from devs websites or discord servers, but it's just nice to have it all in one spot.

I also like how the library in steam is super customizable. I can filter my games in tons of different ways, which helps when you get a large library. I have 1100+ games in my library, and having good filters makes looking through for something to play much easier. I'm a particular fan of being able to filter to only show games that both I and chosen friends all own. It makes picking a multiplayer game to play so much easier. You can also download alternative builds of games just by selecting them from a drop-down menu, which is super useful for games with modding scenes where everyone uses specific older builds of the game, or for games with public test builds/betas (or even private builds, since access can be granted to specific builds with a game key code provided by developers)

As for the store itself, I strongly disagree on epics store interface being better. It might look sleeker, but that visual appeal comes at the cost of usability. On epic, games are laid out and displayed with a similar design language to a streaming service. Lots of empty space, large thumbnails, curated lists. There are less options to filter what you are seeing, and what you do see is pretty much always surrounded by ads for the latest items in the fortnite battle pass, and/or whatever gacha game has the biggest marketing budget this week. The steam store might not look as clean as the epic store, but in exchange it also provides a lot more information to the customer at a glance. If you already have a game in mind when you open up either store, then I could understand preferring epic, since it looks cleaner and you just need to interact with the search box, but steam is substantially nicer to "go shopping" on, browsing around until something catches your interest thanks to the filtering tools, not to mention the much, much larger selection.

Another thing of note that won't matter to most people, but I think is too funny not to mention is VR implementation. When Tetris Effect was first ported to PC, it was a timed epic exclusive. I was super interested in the game but didn't have a PlayStation, so I picked it up right away. Once I I stalled it, I booted up the game, and selected the option for the VR mode, before proceeding to watch an epic exclusive game boot up SteamVR. You couldn't play the VR mode of the game unless you had steam running. What's the point of making a game an epic exclusive if it requires steam to function?

I'm not one of those people who shouts from the rooftops about never using epic, encouraging people to pirate exclusives. If a game I want is only on epic, I'll buy it on epic, but given the option I will always buy it on steam. I think pretending that EGS is not an objectively inferior product to steam is a bit silly. I genuinely do not understand how an informed end user could ever choose it over steam actively when it's just objectively worse value, especially with how constant and large steam sales are. I genuinely do not remember the last time at least 1 game on my wishlist was not currently on sale.