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 think their biggest hurdle was that they are owned by Jeff Bezos
I don’t think they tried releasing a compelling product.
‘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.
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?
That shift was a quarter-century ago. ‘It used to suck worse’ is a bad excuse even when it’s fresh. I don’t care what Steam would cost if they were a brick-and-mortar store; they have only ever done digital distribution, and they have done it for a while.
Their cut is so huge that they can afford to let devs sell keys elsewhere, knowing it makes no difference to their immense profit margin.
Largely because their monopoly is self-reinforcing, and the number of off-site sales is a rounding error.
Meanwhile:
What Epic means by “for developers” is, developers keep more of the money. Walk me through how that’s bad for you.
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.
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.
This is why you never really trust anything from a lemmy comment kids.
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?
🤔
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.
Yeah I found that out too and have been cashing in
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.
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.
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
-
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?
No they didn’t.
I never saw a simple program with a clean store front and no bullshit.
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
I mean, they didn’t try making a good game store.
They barely tried at all
Ethan Evans desperately trying to keep his job as VP of Prime Gaming:
I didn’t even notice they tried to take on Steam.
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.
… 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.
Yeah, Steam is a monopoly, but 1) they’ve been a monopoly since forever and there hasn’t been a Comcast-ish disaster, and 2) more competition doesn’t seem to actually benefit us here but could potentially make things a lot worse.
In principle, Steam is a Sword Of Damocles just like any other Monopoly. In practice, the alternatives are EA and Epic, no thank you (I know itch.io is a good competitor, but they don’t have any pull on AAA publishers so I don’t expect them to take the market if Steam implodes).
Also, Valve is innovating in ways that nobody else seems willing to - not just their Linux ports (represent!), but also their attempts on HTPC gaming (which was unnecessarily a huge pain in the ass on PC, for no good reason) and their steam controller. And their portable PC gaming with the Steam deck (which to be fair GPD probably did first).
All in all, I’m happy to pay the Steam tax for what they’re doing. I have no illusions that Epic Games Store would provide serious competition in terms of the goodies I want, because they already aren’t, and they’re still in their sweetheart phase.
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.
You realize that the cut they’re taking ends up being used to pay for a yacht collection, right? They don’t need board members and shareholders to enrich the few at the expense of the many and to take anti diversity decisions…
There’s nothing great about Valve at this point, they disrupted the status quo back in the day, came up on top and take advantage of their position, just like any other company, private or public, does in their position.
They disrupted the status quo back in 2003 (2001?), then in 2009 they were doing Linux ports, then in ~2015 they were doing HTPC stuff (and also funding Linux graphic driver dev the entire time, Linux gaming in its current state would not exist without Valve), there was their Steam Machine experiment somewhere in there (it flopped but that doesn’t make it cost any less), then they were doing Steam Deck stuff. They’re still paying Linux graphic devs BTW.
What position are they taking advantage of? If they ask for a smaller cut than 30 percent they get botched at for being anti competitive and being too cheap to try and compete against. They ask for more than 30% and they’re price gouging. Sure, everyone who works there is happy and sleeps in piles of money, but they can’t do anything about it without turning into more of a monopoly. As it stands they at least blow money on potentially cool things in R&D like the steam controller, steam box, and Steam Deck.
What do you actually want Gabe to do? He’s already far and wide the industry leader in employee compensation, and he can’t take a smaller cut without becoming a monopoly. Yeah, he could donate loads of money to charity, but his giant stack of cash also keeps his private company lush with funds to continue paying his employees if anything dire does happen, instead of doing like everyone else and laying off people.
You’re defending the owner of a yacht collection and saying his money is used to keep his business lush… Get real.
And you didn’t answer my question.
Because such a ridiculous take doesn’t warrant a response.
No no, you don’t understand!
He’s one of the good billionaires!
(/s for some of you, and for others perhaps you should reconsider why you feel the need to defend a billionaire, regardless of your opinion on video game platforms)
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…
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.
