If it's bad, support ends and nobody lose. Popular free games usually have a very long support period.
Perhaps there will be many 'surprise elements' that cost money, but that means the top 1% will support our games with cosmetics, we can get them for free as long as it is not pay to win. Ubisoft have realized the concept and plans to develop AAA games for free. It's not about steam vs epic, what we face is the decision of the developers who chose not to sell their games to our preferred platform. They also limit themselves to a few platforms and lost support. Developers who made expensive games need to constantly reinvent, only to be bombarded by complaints from customers who expect perfection. The result of the 'free games' made them giants. Valve's top games are already all free (CSGO, TF2, Dota2), and do does epic (Fortnite). Developers can chose any platform and publish their games for free. First of all, it's not valve or epic that set the price.
