All of this hostility towards EG by gamers is really weird to me, but I guess there are less people that really care how the games industry does behind the scenes.

With EGS or not, Epic Games still makes games the way they are possible today - the Unreal Engine powers a ton of SE's latest games including FF7R and SoP. They're making money regardless by the nature of making a frankly excellent tool for game developers. It is one of the two biggest game engines in the world, so tim sweeny and EG probably don't care that much how their store is doing.

Something to note: Sony, Microsoft, and every game company ever has been buying exclusives since the dawn of time. We've been hearing in the news constantly about Sony buying X and Microsoft buying Y. Most of the time this isn't about exclusivity, this is about exclusivity from the thing YOU want it to be on. If Sony bought Square, FF fans wouldn't flinch but if Microsoft bought Square it'd be a riot.

This is the current climate of game development these days. Exclusivity brings sales and it's been that way since the dawn of the home console, since Nintendo and SEGA. If you don't want to participate in it, focus your money on games that are multiplatform and give players the choice to go wherever. FFXIV and the future of FF aren't those games.