Everything except making a store people wanted to use? Ethan Evans, who was previously Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon, has a short retrospective of trying to take on Steam.

  • fox2263@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    They all tried. They all failed.

    Same with video streaming platforms vs Netflix.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Netflix is utter crap. Way over the other side of the enshittification fence. They only subsist due to user capture. They were first thus everyone seems to have an account. More akin to Facebook to social networks than steam to online videogame stores.

      • fox2263@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yes but none of the others have usurped it. They all were on Netflix, left to make their own platforms and are finding out the hard way that running a video platform is not cheap nor easy. Some shuttered and returned to Netflix.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Again, not comparable. Prime video, Disney+ and Max are all similar in subscribers size to Netflix. Steam is ten times larger than GOG in number of active users and twice as large as Epic.

          • fox2263@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Yes they are now but it took a very long time to get there. And prime gets subscribers by default so to, well, prime 🤣. Netflix still has over 300m.

            I’m not even a sub, I cancelled a while back and only have Disney.

            What I was trying to say is, like steam, there was originally one platform in Netflix. Everyone was on it and it was a good time. Then, like steam, a lot of publishers left steam/Netflix and took their content in favour of their own platforms. And then years later due to costs and lower numbers than needed, ended up making their content not exclusive.

            • dustyData@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Again, doesn’t sound similar to me. There are plenty of exclusives both on the streaming and the videogames world. But the history on steam doesn’t follow Netflix’s history at all.

              I think the problem is equating a public trade, stockholders driven service that is entirely in the gutter of service quality and shitty corporate behavior. With a private company that has a mostly solid ethic track record (with few exceptions) that offers unrivaled added value. Netflix already lost the streaming wars. Max exclusives will never go to Netflix, Disney would rather feed children to the pigs than share their IPs. While devs already negotiate time windows to end the exclusivity deals with Epic right out of the gate. Publishers will foam at the mouth about exclusivity just to release steam versions two years later. It’s a massively different situation to Netflix.

      • fox2263@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Prime was tragic for years with terrible interface and content. It’s only recently in the last year or so that it got to a decent level. Disneys content is very good these days, but their interface could still do with some work.

        I’m only a subscriber of Disney as their content matches my interests. I despise Amazon so only get a free trial or pay for a month when something like Reacher is on. Netflix own content no longer interests me especially after cancelling half the things I like.

        I feel like everyone is missing the point here.