this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025

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Amazon's previous VP of Prime Gaming said they "tried everything" to disrupt Steam (www.gamingonlinux.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

69 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Everything, including:

giving a shit about the customer and having them permanently own their own games, even DRM-free like GOG?
Not forcing online connectivity to access the library?
Not shoving ads and spyware into the rest of the Amazon platform?
Appealing ethically by paying all employees a living wage?
Prioritizing innovation in expanding native Linux compatibility?

🤔

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Most of the games that Amazon give away are GOG codes lol

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

GOG codes are the absolute best.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well wipe my ass backwards and call me biscuit; I have been informed today.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Yeah I found that out too and have been cashing in

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Steam doesn't give customers permanent ownership of their games. Its extremely rare, but game licenses do occasionally get revoked on Steam.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Which means that's an area where they could've tried to set themselves apart from Steam.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Those are terms set by the games publishers, Steam and other platforms pass them on to the customer. The only platform big enough to strongarm publishers to not do that is Steam, but it would definitely make some publishers pull out of Steam completely.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I just installed all the free games I got from Amazon before deleting my account and they're all DRM free...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Fuck off Amazon

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Apologies, I should have added the sarcasm tag. /gen

Case in point is that Amazon will try everything for profit except not be cunts

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 month ago

I didn't even notice they tried to take on Steam.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Ethan Evans desperately trying to keep his job as VP of Prime Gaming:

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago

No they didn't.

I never saw a simple program with a clean store front and no bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago

I mean, they didn’t try making a good game store.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago

They barely tried at all

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Steam? Set your sights lower. Maybe try to beat GOG or the EA launcher.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They'd have to do something really crazy to have me pick Amazon over GOG!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It's basically like G-Force now for a selection of GOG and epic games

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Nobody is going to overtake steam without being better. Corporate suits are also too out of touch to even come close

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (15 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

... 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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also a company that isn't primarily a gaming company isn't going to overtake them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

No book store could ever take on a retail store....

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Tried everything except building a nice service that doesn't get in the way and that works, without enshittification and monetisation everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Cloud streaming is not a replacement for steam.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

I don't think they tried releasing a compelling product.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

'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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

What an absurd read. As if middlemen taking a third of revenue is pro-consumer.

Considering this was a shift from retail where getting games to retail cost a great deal more, how exactly is that bad?

Also you know nothing stops gamedevs from selling their keys elsewhere and getting all of the revenue right?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

I think their biggest hurdle was that they are owned by Jeff Bezos

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

They all tried. They all failed.

Same with video streaming platforms vs Netflix.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

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.