Even in this concession that Amazon didn't know what they were doing and just arrogantly threw money at it thinking they'd win by default, he still does not truly identify any of the issues lol bsky.app/profile/gami... - ThreadSky

kriswolfheart.bsky.social • 8 days ago

Even in this concession that Amazon didn't know what they were doing and just arrogantly threw money at it thinking they'd win by default, he still does not truly identify any of the issues lol

https://bsky.app/profile/gamingonlinux.com/post/3lijmdhkxh22p

Reposted from Liam @ GamingOnLinux

Amazon's previous VP of Prime Gaming said they "tried everything" to disrupt Steam
#Steam #Amazon #PrimeGaming #PCGaming

Comments

kriswolfheart.bsky.social•8 days ago

Part of the problem with 'disrupting steam' in the modern environment is that on the consumer end (and even on the dev end in ways other than the cut they take) is pretty good. It's hard for me to even imagine how you could improve on the things Steam already does.

kriswolfheart.bsky.social•8 days ago

Not even getting into the fact that gamers are, broadly, more informed and attentive than other consumers and will always react to some giant company trying to strong arm their way into the space with suspicion if not outright hostility. Very hard to not come off as, essentially, a carpetbagger

friedmattato.bsky.social•8 days ago

It's really Valve's game to lose. People have spent almost 20 years investing in their steam libraries. Moving to another launcher is a losing prospect for any consumer. They'd have to offer transferring existing libraries to even have a shot, and that's ludicrously impossible.

kriswolfheart.bsky.social•8 days ago

The closest thing to a competitor steam has right now is GOG, and that's cause GOG explicitly angles to be something you use -in addition- to Steam, not to the exclusion of it, and do something distinctly different; offering old games for modern platforms. Shit like the EGS will never, ever work

trishacat.bsky.social•8 days ago

I think the biggest reason Steam can't be replaced is because quite frankly, it has the biggest library of games and most pc gamers already have a sizable Steam library. No one wants to download ANOTHER client onto their PC when all their games are already on Steam.

kriswolfheart.bsky.social•8 days ago

There are ways you could attack steam. But you'd have to have a huge war chest and be willing to turn eat shit for a long time. I think one of the best shots would be a storefront that also offers localization at a premium and scoops up JP/CN/KR indies nobody else does https://bsky.app/profile/dimedraws.bsky.social/post/3limtv7bltk2m

kriswolfheart.bsky.social•8 days ago

Basically the only shot you have against Steam is by offering people something Steam can't or won't give them, and artificially creating that situation via exclusivity deals will do nothing but make everyone hate you and want you to die

kriswolfheart.bsky.social•8 days ago

the epic deal (much like the game pass deal) makes sense for indies that will take any measure of financial stability over the alternative, but literally 0 sense for anybody else https://bsky.app/profile/trashgodclaire.bsky.social/post/3limvh5yisc2d

trashgodclaire.bsky.social•8 days ago

Still going to be mad forever that Alan Wake 2 being an epic games exclusive is part of the reason it didn’t make money for years

remick0.bsky.social•8 days ago

Supergiant games had an exclusivity deal with Epic for the original Hades, and a lot of people just waited for it to come to Steam anyways.

Now SG has Hades II early access on Steam, so I guess the exclusivity money dried up or they determined it just wasn't worth it lol

evilmagetim.bsky.social•8 days ago

Kingdom Hearts on PC (Steam) for the first time ever! (It was on epic for like a year) or Hades getting any attention once it released off of epic at 1.0

tomboypepsilove.bsky.social•8 days ago

Thinking back to all the discourse over the years when EGS started doing this, this stuff is usually framed as "gamers boycotting EGS" (negatively or positively) but I think in truth there's not that many people that organically use it as a store as opposed to a Fortnite and free games launcher

dinosaucy.bsky.social•8 days ago

That's a really good observation : O

I've got everything I want from Steam and GoG\Itchio, but a newcomer that did the legwork to import\translate\support titles that are popular or new in regions I normally cant access would get me looking their way

eno-dot.bsky.social•8 days ago

iirc playism tried to do something like that? and even then, they just shifted to just indie publishing & japanese localizations for steam/consoles

glacierdragon.bsky.social•8 days ago

You don't have to make a 1:1 replica with further features, it's that they can't commit to have basic features you'd expect from a (gaming or otherwise) store. Like Epic's lack of buying cart, UPlay/Origin crashing evey 5 minutes, Amazon taking away your ebooks without warning, etc.

eithi.bsky.social•7 days ago

JAST is the only one I can think of because it specifically deals in distributing VNs without needing patches and every big VN that’s banned from Steam is there mostly (excluding Shiravune stuff)

But even then Steam is necessary for these games to sell at all

dimedraws.bsky.social•8 days ago

Yeah steam is untouchable at this point. The only thing that could disrupt them is themselves. Probably sometime after Gabe Newell passes away and someone decides to sell or go public. But at that point you could get one going if you offered like full library transfers or something like that.

daihime.bsky.social•8 days ago

Different publishers keep thinking they can make PC storefronts work like console exclusivity, but for some reason don't realize that people think of these as not the same at all

kanchosuper.bsky.social•7 days ago

Also, neither AAA publishers nor tech megacorps are capable of disrupting Steam because they would need to have a coherent business plan and nobody in silicon valley has had one of those for the past 40 years

johnbowethejoker.bsky.social•8 days ago

I have bought games I've gotten on EGS, either paid or for free, on steam after the fact because the EGS is so damned frustrating to deal with and has absolutely no appeal other than free games and exclusivity.

envinyon.bsky.social•8 days ago

they do have their gog galaxy steam equivalent thing, but yeah its entirely optional

I sometimes even forget I bought a game on GoG because I just put it in my steam library

kriswolfheart.bsky.social•8 days ago

they only even made gog galaxy cause -users- kept whining about wanting it, even

tudsworthington.bsky.social•8 days ago

The fact that the one concession Epic can make on the dev side is "we take less of a cut" is extremely telling, because while Valve's developer outreach can fucking suck sometimes and they seem to have a real problem with anime style VNs, they really are the best at what they do currently.

tudsworthington.bsky.social•8 days ago

And some of this is just that developer outreach for everybody else, even the console makers, got cut to the bone and is really bad right now; but it remains an advantage in that Valve actually seems to bother somewhat.

boofwoofgoof.bsky.social•8 days ago

It's not even that they bother, any other one of those is just straight up bad

I have to reinstall Origin every two weeks because it just uninstalls itself from my laptop

Valve is genuinely winning by default here

infernohabanero.bsky.social•8 days ago

This is why I appreciate GOG in particular. It's a digital store that isn't trying to be like Steam, instead focusing on fixing older PC ports for modern operating systems and without DRM. It's fulfilling a niche the other stores aren't doing.

norbertmadao.bsky.social•8 days ago

Steam is the closest thing to the libertarian anti-antitrust thought experiment of "Well what if a company became a monopoly because they were simply better than everyone else?"

snigglegros.bsky.social•8 days ago

oh this is probably why they stopped selling digital steam cards on Amazon

fumogaming.bsky.social•8 days ago

At this point, the existence of Steam Workshop, big picture mode, easy controller mapping and now the recording feature also makes it so that going to any other storefront that doesn't have all those things will just give you a worse experience by default.

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