Amazon thought it could compete with Steam because it was so much larger than Valve, but Prime Gaming's former VP admits that 'gamers already had the solution to their problems'

Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.

I will never understand, dear reader, why we keep running into this baffling issue of Valve (and PC gaming in general) being underestimated. Starting at its roots, when basically no-one thought it'd work as a distribution platform—and extending into the modern age. Ethan Evans, who was the former Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon until 2020, took to LinkedIn recently to share his wisdom as to why the giant never toppled Valve. And, uh, basically, they thought they could just throw money at the problem.

Alright, I'm being glib here—and hindsight is 20/20—but reading through this explanation has me saying 'no doy' like it's my new catchphrase. Evans is at least being a little self-reflective, though: "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.