By Sagar V. Mankar 
Amazon once made a strong effort to compete with Steam in the video game marketplace sector but didn’t manage to succeed, despite being a much larger company. This surprising admission comes from Ethan Evans, who worked as Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon for over 15 years until 2020.
In a detailed LinkedIn post, Evans explained how Amazon made several attempts to challenge Steam’s dominance but ultimately failed. “We were at least 250 times bigger, and we tried everything. But ultimately, Goliath lost,” Evans wrote.
According to Evans, Amazon tried three different approaches to enter the gaming marketplace.
- First, they bought a small PC game store called Reflexive Entertainment, hoping to grow it into a major platform. This plan “went nowhere,” Evans admitted.
- Their second attempt came after purchasing Twitch, the popular video streaming platform. Amazon created its own PC game store, believing that gamers would naturally buy games from them since they were already using Twitch for streaming. This assumption proved wrong.
- The final attempt was Luna, Amazon’s game streaming service that allowed people to play games without needing high-end computers. Google tried something similar with Stadia around the same time. Evans noted that “neither gained significant traction” while “Steam dominated despite being a relatively small company.”
Evans believes Amazon’s biggest mistake was underestimating what made Steam successful. “It was a store, a social network, a library, and a trophy case all in one. And it worked well,” he explained.
The former VP acknowledged that Amazon wrongly assumed its size and visibility would attract customers. “We underestimated the power of existing user habits,” Evans wrote. “We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions.”
Steam’s comprehensive ecosystem had already solved gamers’ problems, making it difficult for new platforms to gain traction. As Evans put it, “gamers already had the solution to their problems, and they weren’t going to switch platforms just because a new one was available.”
Despite Amazon’s resources and multiple strategies, including acquisitions of Double Helix Games and publishing deals for titles like Lost Ark, the company couldn’t effectively challenge Steam’s position in the marketplace.
Evans concluded with an important business lesson: “Just because you are big enough to build something doesn’t mean people will use it.” He emphasized the importance of understanding customers deeply before making big moves, suggesting that Amazon should have done more research before trying to compete with Steam.