Amazon thought it could compete with Steam because it was so much larger than Valve, but Prime Gaming's former VP admits that 'gamers already had the solution to their problems'

That's not how Capitalism works!

/s

The larger company simply needs to create/invent problems that the smaller company cannot solve, and then sell a solution.

And buy them out at some point too. Very important step.

Valve can make some good calls, but do you guys -really- think enshittification is not coming for it ever? It's just a matter of time.

Amazon tried getting into game production as well and seems to have middling results at best. Having the financial backing is significant, but it doesn't guarantee success.

So after investing millions in this, this is incredible insight that the VP has gained:

1. Talk to Real Customers Before Writing Code

I really recommend reading his LinkedIn post, just to understand how these people think, and how fucking incompetent people at the top raking in millions are. It's surprisingly honest for a LI post (although that bar is very low), probably because the guy is now retired and doesn't give a shit anymore.

I honestly never even processed that Prime Gaming was a thing and that it was trying to compete with Steam. I just knew they purchased Twitch and thought they'd probably abandon it into a shitty, old and slow site like they did with IMDB and Goodreads.

Granted I'm not a gamer, but I don't think I've ever even heard of prime gaming. I've heard of steam though.

Easy: Amazon just gotta invent new problems for gamers! And then sell the solution.

The only launcher I use the same amount if not more is gog.com. Give me those good old games.

Then there's me on Gog buying DRM free games that I can download and keep at my leisure.

The only reason anyone even knew about Prime Gaming was they pushed it with Twitch.

To be honest I really do prefer buying games on GOG. One day steam will go shit and we will be stuck with huge game libraries locked there. The day GOG goes dark I’ll still have all the offline installers of everything I bought.

Pretty ballsy to put up a long LinkedIn post that boils down to "I am incompetent and should not be hired under any circumstances."

I saw this posted a couple days ago which pretty succinctly summarizes the current state of the market.

Commented this a year ago, and its just as relevant today.

Steam is a platform that happens to also have a storefront. Other companies are building storefronts and hoping that's enough.

If you can't provide fast downloads, cloud saves synced across devices, achievements, mod support, friends lists, and multiplayer support, it's not a real option. Being cheaper or having some exclusives aren't attractive. Gog already has the drm free angle to be a legitimate competitor.

Valve wins by doing nothing... it's a tale as old as time.

Steam's market share is a huge factor in why their competition never succeeds, but it's hardly the only reason. Steam is a whole platform, not just a launcher or storefront. And they're also cognizant that the consumers are not just a revenue source to be milked, but actually long-term customers whose loyalty is important.

It really shouldn't be a surprise that when you enter an established market, you're not going to accomplish shit by providing a lesser service while simultaneously treating the consumer worse.

Tim Sweeney shit on Linux gamers enough that I refused to ever give Epic a penny

The biggest advantage Steam has over other platforms:

1. They're not publicly-traded, meaning they are inclined to look out for long-term success vs. short term profits.
2. Steam is already on their systems, and may have been for 20+ years. Nobody wants a dozen fucking game launchers and Steam already has virtually every game in existence available there. Not to mention the "community" features, friends lists, etc. Every other platform is simply too late.
3. They have 20+ years' experience learning what gamers want and implementing it.

Amazon could probably compete with them if they really wanted to, but that would involve a large, long-term, consumer-centric investment, which probably isn't a good use of their money.

steam pros: a store that always has a sale or big holiday sale right around the corner, a social network, a library for game info and game modding, and a trophy case etc.

what was amazon offering? full priced games, no sales that beat steams (a free game offer now and then only if you give them $140 a year and forget about it), and shitty cloud streaming of few games? so they tried nothing actually meaningful, were all out of ideas, but shocked they lost

oh and also on a platform notorious for making e-books unable to work on pcs, forcing their proprietary hardware for a PDF. and now they're actually going in and changing/censoring whats written in books without authors consent.

Who would've imagined given your disaster apps like the Appstore and your shitty "free app" giveaways. Even the FAQs you posted after shutting down the service were purposely vague and irresolute.

Of course I will consume digital products from you again! Said fucking no one.

I do like steam

Amazon who? Never heard of them.

I recently learned that you get free games with prime. I even got a decent title via that way, I believe. I wouldn’t know where to look it up though…

Do nothing. Win.

Hopefully Amazon doesn't buy steam now.

I'll take all the free Amazon and Epic games. I've never bought a game from either one but they are 95% of my collection.

I went to their website, it reminded me of AWS.

At least prime video looks half decent.