Amazon's previous VP of Prime Gaming said they "tried everything" to disrupt Steam
Amazon's previous VP of Prime Gaming said they "tried everything" to disrupt Steam
Everything except making a store people wanted to use? Ethan Evans, who was previously Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon, has a short retrospective of trying to take on Steam.
I didn't even notice they tried to take on Steam.
Ethan Evans desperately trying to keep his job as VP of Prime Gaming:
No they didn't.
I never saw a simple program with a clean store front and no bullshit.
I mean, they didn’t try making a good game store.
Steam? Set your sights lower. Maybe try to beat GOG or the EA launcher.
They'd have to do something really crazy to have me pick Amazon over GOG!
It's basically like G-Force now for a selection of GOG and epic games
They barely tried at all
Nobody is going to overtake steam without being better. Corporate suits are also too out of touch to even come close
No publicly traded company can compete with a well run private company. Infinitely growing profits breaks everything. Never take a company public if you can help it. It may even be preferable to shutter it if that is the only other option. Having stupid amounts of money is cool and all, but it does nothing useful. Money is only a tool if you actually use it... a golden hammer sitting on a shelf does no one any good.
Yeah even apple is talking about potentially introducing ads into maps when their whole positioning of premium price has meant premium product and experience.
But the pressure of continual stock increases means company has to keep chasing exponential growth as opposed to being content with sustainable growth.
Nobody is going to overtake Steam even if they're better. People don't want to have multiple libraries to deal with so you see them brag about paying for games to have them on Steam even though the game has been free on other platforms... Sometimes they even have claimed them and will still spend money to have them on Steam.
Steam will stay great so long as they stay a private company. It's the enshitification of going public and appeasing boardmembers and shareholders that ruin companies like Valve. I hope GabeN chooses a great successor when he decides to step down. Hoping for another 27 years of awesome.
... and then they'll recoil in horror when you mention that's what a monopoly is.
Monopolies can be positive and functional. They're still monopolies. Streaming was better was Netflix was the only choice, and had everything, for a reasonable price. Competition's supposed to be what drives those qualities. Exclusivity breaks that. Exclusivity splinters the market into desperate fiefdoms.
But there's still a word for when only one store matters.
Also a company that isn't primarily a gaming company isn't going to overtake them.
No book store could ever take on a retail store....
Every single Amazon product is a half-arsed mess off things that barely function. They're basically just a delivery company that charges a percentage of the package value now.
Something like 70% of their net income comes from AWS that pretty much runs a huge portion of the internet.
They also charge storage fees to keep your products on their shelf in the warehouse.
This is why you never really trust anything from a lemmy comment kids.
Tried everything except building a nice service that doesn't get in the way and that works, without enshittification and monetisation everywhere.
Cloud streaming is not a replacement for steam.
I don't think they tried releasing a compelling product.
Beat the competition, then enshittify yourself while your customer base sticks with you is the strategy used in all Amazon products. Amazon is the last storefront I would want to sell games in the scale of Steam.
'Why didn't they just try harder?' is an increasingly worrying take. A company could copy Steam's storefront and backend, verbatim, and it wouldn't impact Steam's monopoly on PC game sales. They're entrenched and they're well-liked. You can't buy a reputation overnight.
Blaming the action without considering the environment is still a mistake. Epic tried everything, and people still scoff about UI, like that's the billion-dollar difference. Nah: it's attributing the difference in outcome to surface-level distinctions. And if Epic unfucked their apparently ugly storefront, these people would pick another excuse, because I guarantee you it wouldn't change EGS's irrelevance.
Steam was the first to offer 2 hour/14 day refunds, as well as refunds over broken games. They brought reviews to the storefront. Communities and discussion boards to communicate with devs and find like-minded players. Demos, 4 packs, easy access to servers and SDKs, easy update delivery and tracking for consumers...
It's a store-front with a strong focus on consumer happiness. People are not going to give that up for EGS or Prime, which are run by psychopaths and not even remotely consumer-friendly. Tim Sweeny even said EGS is made for developers, with the implication it is not for consumers.
GOG is probably the closest competitor that stands any hope of success but they have steered clear of actually entering Steam's territory, preferring to grab a market Steam neglects (retro PC gamers). Considering they have not developed the other systems Steam has I don't think they want to compete and are content to coexist.
Neat.
Explaining how they got the monopoly doesn't change that they have a monopoly. Amazon or Epic could do all that - and they genuinely could, god knows they have the money - but the result would not be the same. They exist in the context of Steam already running shit. Adoption is a feature you cannot design. That's why Valve had to force it on people via Half-Life 2.
Tim Sweeny even said EGS is made for developers, with the implication it is not for consumers.
What an absurd read. As if middlemen taking a third of revenue is pro-consumer.
I hate the idea of more game stores because exclusives piss me off, and that's the only viable tactic another store could use to get people to leave steam. When Netflix was all there was, it was great. We saw in real time how that shitshow ended. I had to bring out my old ship and chart new waters. I do not want to do this with my game library.
Their Luna product seems to be different to Steam. It's a streaming platform like Playstation Now or the Google Stadia one that got shut down.
The other games that they've got on there primarily seem to be DRM-free GOG codes, mixed with some for the Epic store. Maybe they meant they were taking on Steam by boosting their competitors?
I think their biggest hurdle was that they are owned by Jeff Bezos
They all tried. They all failed.
Same with video streaming platforms vs Netflix.
Netflix is utter crap. Way over the other side of the enshittification fence. They only subsist due to user capture. They were first thus everyone seems to have an account. More akin to Facebook to social networks than steam to online videogame stores.
Prime is better than Netflix imo.
As is Disney Plus.
Prime was tragic for years with terrible interface and content. It’s only recently in the last year or so that it got to a decent level. Disneys content is very good these days, but their interface could still do with some work.
I’m only a subscriber of Disney as their content matches my interests. I despise Amazon so only get a free trial or pay for a month when something like Reacher is on. Netflix own content no longer interests me especially after cancelling half the things I like.
I feel like everyone is missing the point here.
Everything, including:
🤔
Most of the games that Amazon give away are GOG codes lol
GOG codes are the absolute best.
Well wipe my ass backwards and call me biscuit; I have been informed today.
Steam doesn't give customers permanent ownership of their games. Its extremely rare, but game licenses do occasionally get revoked on Steam.
Which means that's an area where they could've tried to set themselves apart from Steam.
I just installed all the free games I got from Amazon before deleting my account and they're all DRM free...
Fuck off Amazon
Apologies, I should have added the sarcasm tag. /gen
Case in point is that Amazon will try everything for profit except not be cunts