I remember when Epic tried holding games hostage for a year or so. That died pretty quick.

That's because they were fronting the money to basically compensate for the fact that everyone knew it was going to be a huge sales loss. They can only toss money into a pit for so long before people start getting mad.

And between the bad press, lawsuits Epic was specifically in, and that companies figured out they could do "early access" on Epic while taking their money before releasing fully on Steam as it ended it was clear even the devs were taking advantage of them.