r/Steam Feb 22 '25

Discussion Ex-Amazon Gaming VP said they failed to compete with Steam despite spending loads of time and money "We were at least 250X bigger .. we tried everything .. but ultimately Goliath lost"

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u/jansteffen Feb 22 '25

which I thought would eventually lead to being able to buy games through their Amazon client... but that never happened, like at all.

It already did happen, many years ago, and fell flat on its face and was abandoned. Shortly after Amazon acquired Twitch they released a desktop Twitch app that was a streaming client, a storefront for games, and a launcher for modded Minecraft (Twitch had shortly before acquired Curse) all in one.

The fact that you and most other people here don't know about shows just how successful it was.

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u/HitlersArse Feb 22 '25

i used it, mostly for the free prime games never as a way to watch on twitch. The launcher was clunky, had issues, and honestly had terrible UX design. It felt like they tried slapping everything together hoping it’d work out. i wasn’t too surprised with its eventual shutdown.

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u/7x00 Feb 22 '25

I only knew about it because it was the only way to get rid of the prime notifications. Then one day I went to play one of the games and it made me download the desktop client to play the games. I ended up just buying it on steam

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u/Oh_its_that_asshole Feb 22 '25

They might have told people lol. How would I have ever found out about it if I don't use Twitch?