- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.world
I did not realize they were trying to compete in the first place.
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Why does every single picture of Gabe look like hedonism bot wrapped in skin?
That’s not how Capitalism works!
/s
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.
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.
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
Could you link a screenshot of the LinkedIn post? I don’t want to make a LinkedIn account.
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.
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.
“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!”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Honestly I was excited about o3de and still follow it from time to time, but the project feels so industrial versus Godots work
Steam is a platform that happens to also have a storefront. Other companies are building storefronts and hoping that’s enough.
If you can’t provide fast downloads, cloud saves synced across devices, achievements, mod support, friends lists, and multiplayer support, it’s not a real option. Being cheaper or having some exclusives aren’t attractive. Gog already has the drm free angle to be a legitimate competitor.
This is something from before 2010, but I distinctly remember not being able to play Borderlands 1 with my friends because the site I bought it from didn’t have a patch yet that Steam did. This was one of the things that sold me on Steam. Prior to that I hated it. It’s nearly two decades ago so it’s hard to really remember why, but it wasn’t always viewed as favorably as now.
This isn’t some dig at Steam, like I said, this was over a decade ago.
There was definitely heavy skepticism at first. Buying online was new when it launched and physical was still king. I remember thinking it was dumb to buy from a website that could disappear instead of good old CDs.
I think the need to be online was what bothered me more, I remember a few times having trouble launching stuff.
I commented elsewhere that I’ve been trying out some classic PC games in their native Linux form lately.
It is so amazing to see my old saves just show up like nothing ever changed. Plus lots of other little things like time played and friend list and all that.
Steam is a platform that happens to also have a storefront.
I would like to see government intervention to break up Steam to remedy this
Though arguably Epic is way bigger of a platform since it goes from developer to end user
I’d rather see competitors actually try and be better than steam rather than make steam worse.
How did you get “make steam worse” from that?
Everything else still exists, just not controlled by Valve
…Breaking steam up would make it worse.
How? If any feature is necessary then it will be filled by someone else
You aren’t losing anything
Apart from all the non-profitable features divorced from meaning.
The forums would go in the blink of an eye.
And then each section would try to make itself complete in itself to hoard user time, and at least one would start selling advertising space.
How profitable is running a lemmy instance?
Because each independent section would try to make more money and end up breaking things and adding new shit users don’t want but marketing execs think are good.
Then find a different workshop/forum/launcher to pair with the Steam store
In no world is it worse than what we have now
Name an example of a better workshop, I’ve used nexus mods and it’s a complicated mess that requires a subscription to get normal download speeds for content created for free by other people
If steam is a client not a store then whichever steam allows to be built into their client
What exactly would you be breaking up? Steam isn’t a mishmash of companies…
And they have plenty of competition. Just that none of the competition tires hard enough to be compelling.
Because they’re trying to compete on a product level, not a service level. They want your money, but don’t want to have to put forth the effort Valve has to get it.
forums, store, launcher, workshop
The forums company will be where all the money is at, think of the profit!
If your software is profit motivated then it doesn’t need to exist
Not that it would make any difference for the end user because it should all be modular enough for the user to mix and match any of those services with any other services
Does the dadaist approach to arguments usually work for you?
I thought you would have reference Stallman in trying to dismiss me
They offer keys which allows for third party sellers to exist, and there are a handful of legitimate sites that sell keys for steam.
No don’t break up Steam. Standardize DRM and make digital games licenses ownable/transferable. I could see the EU eventually doing this.
I say this as someone who loves Steam but wants more ownership, in the games I “own”.
Steam is hardly a monopoly.
There are plenty of successfully competing stores. The only real thing Steam has going for it is network effect that every gamer has an account therefore it’s decent for socialising, but even that is being challenged by Discord and a multitude of others.
GamePass is probably the closest we’re seeing to a potential monopoly. The purchase of activation should never have been permitted.
Steam’s best feature is Proton.
As I noted in the comment you’re replying to “Epic is arguably bigger”
So not sure why you felt like arguing about Steam being a monopoly
Then why do you want to see it broken up? Monopoly seemed a pretty reasonable assumption.
Steam seems to value Unix a lot more than Epic does
It’s a launcher successful on the most popular OS in the world that they don’t even own that anyone can come in to compete at. And had decades to do so when “PC gaming was dead” so was wide open for anyone that wanted to try to reach potential customers over fixating on the console demographic. What more do want.
It doesn’t even come pre-installed with Windows.
It’s not as if gamers could smell the stench of corporate greed
Valve wins by doing nothing… it’s a tale as old as time.
Steam’s market share is a huge factor in why their competition never succeeds, but it’s hardly the only reason. Steam is a whole platform, not just a launcher or storefront. And they’re also cognizant that the consumers are not just a revenue source to be milked, but actually long-term customers whose loyalty is important.
It really shouldn’t be a surprise that when you enter an established market, you’re not going to accomplish shit by providing a lesser service while simultaneously treating the consumer worse.
They are reinvesting money back into r&d, and linux. They keep updating everything. Wish they kept making steam controllers. I have seen steam change a lot over the last +10 years.
MBAs walk into this arena thinking they’ve got their quarterly agile reports synergized outside the box to the max.
Somehow none of them have learned the concept of long term customers
Gaben and Steam: does nothing, wins
It always baffles me when I see an established company fail to understand long-term customers and still expect any kind of meaningful growth.
It’s because the stock market doesn’t care about anything except the next quarter. Valve can think long term because they’re privately owned.
The loyalty thing is what kept me.
I was wary of another gaming platform, there were so many and they all seemed the same, I never liked one over the other - they were just means to an end.
A few years back I really wanted to play RDR2 with my friends. It was expensive and I never pre-order, but as soon as it came out on (a small) sale I bought it for all 4 of us.
It was a lot of money for me, but I really wanted the story to play with everyone.
All was well at first, until we had each completed the tutorial and met up in open world. That’s when we learned that the game was based on GTA and the devs do not care about hackers.
We had one fucking with us for over an hour, teleporting us into the air and dropping us, setting us randomly on fire, spawning space ships and so on.
I begged in voice for them to just leave us be, to no avail.
We are all older, we rarely have time to play together. I was crushed.
I was an hour over the return time on Steam, one of the other friends took a bit longer exploring and was even more than that.
I contacted steam anyway and tried to get a refund, and they granted it for all of us.
Later I learned this was a thing in RDR2 and there was now the ability to create private lobbies, but I just can’t make myself try it and give Rockstar any money.
Steam however, won a lifelong fan. They didn’t have to honour the refund, and they don’t have to provide personal support that offers more than just the canned responses, but they do.
I hope Gabe lives forever, or finds another like him to carry the torch after he’s gone.
Yeah my loyalty to them comes from the fact that they treat me like they value my business. Every company says they do, but they help when help is needed and get out of the way when it isn’t. The only other businesses I feel that way towards are small restaurants and bars. It’s not an unconditional loyalty but so long as they treat me right they’ll keep my business.
Lrrr: Why does the larger company not simply eat the smaller one?
Oh they do, frequently
Then there’s me on Gog buying DRM free games that I can download and keep at my leisure.
Yep. GOG is good. I’ve been getting a bit more into itch.io as well though. itch is packed with small simple experimental indie stuff. I’ve got no interest in most of it; but there’s a surprising amount of good stuff there too. (At least, it was surprising to me when I started visiting it more frequently.)
I don’t use the Amazon launcher, but I’m pretty sure the Amazon games are DRM free as well. Not sure if it’s all of them but I know a lot are
Amazon launcher requires an internet connection for games, at least the free ones.
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.
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.
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.
When Gabe dies, sure, enshittification will happen. In the meanwhile, enjoy Steam for what it is for now, but prepare with contingencies.
They were competing?
The only launcher I use the same amount if not more is gog.com. Give me those good old games.
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.
GOG providing installers is absolutely amazing.
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.
Maybe it’s nice on windows, but on other systems, got still relies on steam.
GOG + Lutris
Lutris is just a pain compared to proton. I’m not going to say that its terrible anymore but 90% of the games that I play regularly on steam just work straight out of the box.
To be honest I really do prefer buying games on GOG. One day steam will go shit and we will be stuck with huge game libraries locked there. The day GOG goes dark I’ll still have all the offline installers of everything I bought.
Piracy is our friend. If Steam ever goes to shit, gamers would go back to piracy.
Steam also never took it’s eye off the piracy ball. Offer up a service better than free piracy.
Just pulling from my memory:
- Family Share
- Easy controller support
- Game Casting
- Gameplay recording
- “Invisible Login” for social network
- Torrent from a local area network friend who has the game on their computer
- (list goes on)
Steam Workshop is pretty nice to.
deleted by creator
Huh, did they make an alternative I don’t know about?
