I'm just a bit surprised at the extremely strong feelings that seem to exist around this. If GOG bought out a huge exclusive would that not be ok? Why is it apparently ok for Steam to have exclusives?
Exclusives were never okay on PC. More than that, they were hardly ever
practiced, with maybe a couple examples in the whole history since the start of digital distribution on PC. And one could argue even before that.
What is okay on PC, is self-publishing. It everyone's common ground, you can take your game and sell it yourself, wherever and however you can. That's what all of the publisher-owned storefronts, like UPlay, Origin, Battle.net, the Rockstar and Bethsoft launchers, are. Their 'exclusives' are just those companies' games. Even on GOG is still applies, as the vast majority of titles 'exclusive' to GOG, are games that CDP or CDPR actually made, or made possible/published, themselves.
I can understand your confusion in regards to Steam, as many games are indeed available only on Steam. But you might want to consider that the vast majority of developers just don't have the resources to self-publish. They can't, or don't have the skills or money, to have their own site to sell their game and market it. To these people, Steam gives everything they need, for just $100 and next to no review process. Hosting, marketing and visibility tools, a massive customer base to appeal to, all kinds of additional developer benefits. Compared to GOG, where you have to pass a heavy manual review process (since it's a curated store) and risk being denied, or to Itch that has a very limited audience and can't sell to the majority of the developing world (since it only accepts like two payment methods, one of which is PayPal), Steam is a natural first choice. And since their resources are limited, and the benefits of turning to other storefronts are slim (unless people really ask for it), many developers choose to remain on Steam alone.
That's the key part.
Choose. Steam does not prevent them from going elsewhere. Steam does not prevent them from selling freely generated keys on other sites, for 100% of what profit they can muster. Developers and publishers are free to choose to use everything that Steam provides, or nothing of it. Same with Itch, same with GOG once the game has passed curation. None of these stores impugn on the concept of
choice, developers and publishers go to these stores willingly.
With EGS's market approach, there is no 'choice'. By the power of money, EGS is exerting control over both the developers'/publishers', and the customers' ability to
choose where they can put, or buy their games. This, is effectively anathema to PC gaming as an open, free platform. It's the marketing approach of console platform holders, and it brings the same console-war mindset with it - to PC, where nobody sane wants to have it.