Amazon Is Quietly Plotting to Take Over the Video Game Market
Steam may not be dominant for long
In 2018, Epic Games, the company behind cultural megahit Fortnite, launched a digital game store to compete with Steam, Valve’s overwhelmingly dominant platform. It was the first major challenge to Steam’s PC dominance in 15 years. But while Epic and Steam duel for control of a massive market, Amazon is quietly making moves that could overtake them both.
For years, Amazon has sold PC games, just as it sells console games, but it hasn’t drawn much attention to that fact. Often, they are sold with a code that allows buyers to activate the product on Steam. As a result, price-savvy customers could use tools like IsThereAnyDeal to find out if a game is cheaper on Amazon, buy it there, and then keep launching games through their unified Steam library.
The gaming industry has rapidly grown into one of the dominant entertainment industries on the planet, with video game revenue surpassing theatrical box office returns for the first time in 2018. So while Amazon could be content to siphon off a few sales here and there while letting Steam maintain its market position, it’s more likely that the company sees a much bigger opportunity to insert itself into the video game market.
