There are a few competing things going on here.

On one hand, it's impossible to release something that competes directly with Steam in features. Steam has a multi-billion dollar, decade-and-a-half head start. EA and Ubisoft did not launch something even remotely comparable, and neither did EGS. To expect this is, frankly, lunacy. It's just not realistic, and if you feel that the industry is better off with a Steam competitor, you have to accept warts and growing pains.

On the other hand, people probably would accept this, had they not been forced to use it for some games (though I'd wager most of the people complaining never would have purchased any of these games.) It's easier to accept growing pains and warts from something you're choosing to use, rather than something you're forced to use.

On to some third hand, but no one would use it. It's frankly stupid to use something inferior for "political" reasons, which is why the handful of rabid AMD fanboys we have here baffle me (it doesn't feel like any Intel fanboys remain, but AMD ones do. They're winning right now, though, because man, are those new chips something else.) EGS would just die if it didn't have a reason for people to use it, and building a reason is costly, risky, and time consuming. A better way to get your user count up is by offering something so compelling that developers come over exclusively. Often, this is done without being announced as such. EGS probably made a mistake by using the term so loudly.

And, on some Goro-esque 4th hand, this does lock people in, but it's a necessary evil. And as such, I just don't get why people so happily refer to it as evil, as in, some kind of Omen-esque scheme for putting people into involuntary servitude. To the point that you see outright lies, like "if you don't go exclusive, they won't sell you!" But that roadmap needs to move faster.