Former Prime Gaming VP Reflects On Amazon’s Failure To Overtake Steam

Almost 20 years in the past, Valve expanded Steam to incorporate third-party titles on its strategy to turning into the dominant market for PC video games. That attracted the eye of Amazon, which had beforehand used its on-line attain to change into the No. 1 ebook vendor. However when Amazon tried to make use of Prime Gaming to overhaul Steam, it got here up far wanting that objective. Now, former Prime Gaming VP Ethan Evans has provided his perspective about why Amazon could not dislodge Steam from its perch.

By way of PC Gamer, Evans shared a prolonged publish on his LinkedIn account about Amazon’s a number of makes an attempt to supplant Steam through the years. He famous that Amazon’s try and scale up its smaller on-line PC sport store–Reflexive Leisure–went nowhere; and shopping for Twitch could not persuade gamers to make Prime Gaming their most well-liked PC video games market. Even Prime Gaming’s game-streaming service, Luna, did not make a lot headway regardless of permitting customers to play video games with out a high-end PC. Ultimately, Evans concluded that Amazon underestimated Valve and did not perceive why gamers gravitated to Steam.

“[Steam] was a retailer, a social community, a library, and a trophy case multi functional. And it labored properly,” wrote Evans. “At Amazon, we assumed that measurement and visibility could be sufficient to draw prospects, however we underestimated the ability of present person habits. We by no means validated our core assumptions earlier than investing closely in options. The reality is that players already had the answer to their issues, they usually weren’t going to change platforms simply because a brand new one was accessible. We wanted to construct one thing dramatically higher, however we failed to take action. And we wanted to validate our assumptions about our prospects earlier than beginning to construct. However we by no means actually did that both. Simply since you are sufficiently big to construct one thing does not imply folks will use it.”

The lesson that Evans took from Amazon’s failed makes an attempt to supplant Steam is that each one companies ought to take the time to totally perceive the shoppers they’re focusing on. He additionally confused the significance of constructing a dialogue with prospects and testing assumptions earlier than taking big–and very expensive–steps to courtroom them.

Valve remains to be the most well-liked PC market in 2025, albeit with competitors from a number of storefronts. In different latest Steam information, Valve removed a free-to-play game from Steam as a result of it contaminated gamers with malicious malware. Valve additionally apparently banned games that require users to watch ads to be able to play them. Valve is reportedly increasing its attain with Steam Controller 2 and a new VR controller, neither of which have been formally introduced but.