this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025

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842

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' (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 2 days ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

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I did not realize they were trying to compete in the first place.

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[–] arc@lemm.ee 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You can see why Amazon's efforts suck just by using it. That isn't to say I defend Steam, or Epic, or GOG, or UPlay, or Origin, or Battle.net, or Microsoft Store because they all suck. They suck for existing as separate things that all do the same thing but each eating 500Mb of space on my computer.

The ideal situation would be a federated platform where everyone shares a single sign on, everyone shares the same update, backup & restore mechanisms, everyone can join the same lobbies and matchmaking. But that's too sensible.

[–] Maltese_Liquor@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

Or they stop trying to lock people in with exclusive games and instead attempt to actually compete by the quality of the service. I know it will never happen but I can dream.

[–] PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 11 points 5 hours ago

Why does every single picture of Gabe look like hedonism bot wrapped in skin?

[–] sunbytes@lemmy.world 24 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

That's not how Capitalism works!

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.

[–] Notyou@sopuli.xyz 10 points 11 hours ago

The larger company needs to hinder the smaller company with pointless slapp lawsuits. That way the smaller company will be too busy to innovate anything new.

[–] Abnorc@lemm.ee 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

Honestly I was excited about o3de and still follow it from time to time, but the project feels so industrial versus Godots work

[–] merdaverse@lemmy.world 33 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (4 children)

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

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.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 hour ago

What's awesome is you will still catch Twitch streamers actively encouraging people to use their free prime gaming sub to their channel or any channel because "fuck Jeff Bezos" lol

[–] Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 9 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Could you link a screenshot of the LinkedIn post? I don't want to make a LinkedIn account.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 8 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

As VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon, we failed multiple times to disrupt the game platform Steam. We were at least 250x bigger, and we tried everything. But ultimately, Goliath lost. Here's why:

The 15+ year long attempt to challenge Steam started before I was VP of Prime Gaming, but we never cracked the code. Not under my leadership or anyone else's.

The first way we tried to enter the online-game-store market was through acquisition. We acquired Reflexive Entertainment (a small PC game store) and tried to scale it. It went nowhere.

Then, after buying Twitch, we created our own PC games store. Our assumption was that gamers would naturally buy from us because they were already using Twitch. Wrong.

Finally, we built "Luna," a game streaming service that let people play without a high-end PC. Around the same time, Google tried the same thing with their product "Stadia." Neither gained significant traction. The whole time, Steam dominated despite being a relatively small company (compared to Amazon and Google).

The mistake was that we underestimated what made consumers use Steam.

It was a store, a social network, a library, and a trophy case all in one. And it worked well.

At Amazon, we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers, but we underestimated the power of existing user habits. We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions. The truth is that gamers already had the solution to their problems, and they weren't going to switch platforms just because a new one was available.

We needed to build something dramatically better, but we failed to do so. And we needed to validate our assumptions about our customers before starting to build. But we never really did that either.

Just because you are big enough to build something doesn’t mean people will use it.

Reflecting on these mistakes, I realize how crucial it is to deeply understand customers before making big moves. That’s why James Birchler’s guest newsletter caught my attention—his piece is a practical guide on obtaining real customer insights and using them to challenge entrenched assumptions that can hurt product success.

James breaks his advice down into three key steps, illustrated with stories from his time as VP of Engineering at IMVU:

Talk to Real Customers Before Writing Code
Test Assumptions, Not Just Features
Build Measurement Into Your Process

After explaining how he learned these lessons the hard way (getting screamed at by customers and board members), James shares action items you can implement within a week to improve how you understand your customers.

I wish Amazon had followed James’ playbook before trying to take on Steam. But since we didn’t, at least you can.

[–] sgtgig@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

At Amazon, we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers

Literally "we're big so we'll make money" with no thought on the product actually being offered.

Hilarious.

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 hours ago

"But we acquired a successful franchise! All we have to do is attach a handle to it and crank it and the money will come flying out!"

[–] kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

This is such lukewarm obvious stuff to anyone who's done any agile project management that it's mind-boggling they would fail to do it.

But I guess it's what happens when decision are made by bean counters with absolute authority.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 hours ago

It's corporate arrogance. "We are so big we can take that market" without understanding what built that market. They think business is numbers but it is about relationships with people.

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 12 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Feels like every 5 years some major Internet company looks at how many billions video games draws in, established markets with PC and consoles, and how much hype and marketing gets thrown around the space and decides they can do it better.

With zero understanding of what consumers want, expecting to be able to charge extra for content that no one asked for or services like steam offer for free, and usually with such an awful UI and interactions with the consumer you wonder if they see potential customers as anything but cattle to be figuratively slaughtered and try to milk as much currency as they can with overpriced subscription(s) and not-so-micro microtransactions.

Edit: For those that want examples, most recent one comes to mind is Stadia

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago

Every prime gaming offer I took was for games on steam. I really thought they were just promoting twitch with drops and stuff, not actually trying to compete. Haha, the balls.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Lrrr: Why does the larger company not simply eat the smaller one?

[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Oh they do, frequently

[–] neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

I've checked in on it for the last several months and only picked up like 3 games that sounded interesting. And those only because they were free/included in my prime subscription.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm a vivid gamer. I've never heard of prime gaming.

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[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's not as if gamers could smell the stench of corporate greed

[–] racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 15 hours ago

I love your optimism, but looking at the current trends of preorders, microtransactions, gacha games, .... Most gamers don't care about corporate greed and dive into it head first...

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[–] arschfidel@discuss.tchncs.de 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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

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[–] Netrunner@programming.dev -1 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 9 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Valve is Augustus Caesar. A benevolent dictator that did much to improve the quality of life of his citizens, but still a dictator. They've centralized control over the PC gaming sphere and brought tons of legitimate improvements to the hobby. Now they have no legitimate competitors. Epic Games is a mosquito bite, Prime Gaming is nothing, GOG is the closest thing and even they're miles behind.

It only took a couple of generations to go from Augustus to Nero. I do not anticipate good things once Gaben retires/dies.

[–] Abnorc@lemm.ee 7 points 10 hours ago

I admit that I still make Steam purchases, but this has started to be in the back of my mind when doing so. It is still another company that sells stuff that the customer ends up not owning. With all that they've done for gaming on Linux and doing right by their customers so far, it's just so hard to doubt them.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago

When Gabe dies, sure, enshittification will happen. In the meanwhile, enjoy Steam for what it is for now, but prepare with contingencies.

[–] Hiphophorrah@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

I use gog, but fuck the launcher. Fuck all launchers. An icon on desktop is all I want.

Thankfully it's easy to get no matter the storefront.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

GoG is just the best. They don't have all the nice things Steam has, like workshop for example, but they compensate for it by actually selling you a game, not just renting it out with drm.

[–] stardust@lemmy.ca 4 points 22 hours ago

GOG providing installers is absolutely amazing.

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