Amazon's Former VP Of Prime Gaming Details Losing War With Steam

Steam currently stands as king of the hill when it comes to PC game distribution, with Valve’s storefront operating as the default choice for almost everyone looking to play games on their computer. Many companies have tried to dethrone Steam, only to fall to the wayside. Ethan Evans, former VP of Prime Gaming at Amazo,n is sharing how the Silicon Valley giant attempted to take Valve down in a post on LinkedIn.

Amazon’s attempts to create a viable Steam competitor stretch over 15 years, with the first maneuver being the acquisition of a small storefront called Reflexive Entertainment. Amazon hoped it could compete by just scaling it up, but was unable to gain any traction. Years later Amazon would go on to acquire Twitch, and assumed it would be able to leverage the popular streaming service to generate game sales as well. Again, no luck. It’s latest effort in the gaming space is the Luna game streaming service, which has also failed to become the juggernaut Amazon is hoping for.


Evans says that Amazon’s biggest “mistake was that we underestimated what made consumers use Steam”, which is a high quality, easy to use app that provides everything PC gamers need. Moreover, the company went into this battle believing that its size would be enough to bring in developers, publishers and gamers, all without providing an experience that was better than what Valve was offering with Steam.

This revelation shouldn’t be all that surprising -- Amazon isn’t a gaming first company. So it was always going to be difficult for it to compete with Valve, which cut its teeth as a game developer. What is surprising is that Amazon didn’t attempt some kind of acquisition of Valve earlier on, which would’ve gotten the company what it was looking for. Thankfully, we’re in a timeline where Steam is a reliable way for PC gamers to buy their games.