Amazon's strategic failure with the video game industry

I got the feeling while I worked there that their overreaching non-competes and IP clauses were a big reason they couldn't attract good creative talent.

You had to agree to give them everything that you worked on outside of work, even if it was unrelated to your job. And even if you worked in a different part of the company, you weren't allowed to contribute to or participate in other peoples' game-related projects unless everyone involved worked for Amazon, and if you did work on a game side project (which Amazon would own,) it had to use AWS for its online features.

That's not how you hire creative talent. It felt insulting, and I think their pearl-clutching put off the sort of people who might have been able to make them some real hits. Their failure to break into the industry does not surprise me; it always had a painfully stodgy "hello, fellow kids" kind of feel.

well, this isn't the first time I have heard about Cryengine being terrible. how other studios like Arkane handled it is a mystery