So, the question of 'Is the announced shutdown of Amazon Luna going to
affect the 'free' games on Amazon Prime?" is still up in the air. The announcement said new Luna stuff would cease on 10 April, but here I
am six days later saying there are still free games. But... maybe
those games were put up as freebies /before/ the cut-off date? The
only way we'll know for sure is if any new games appear after this announcement. But the fact that it's so few new titles this time isn't
giving me confidence that the flow of freebies will continue.
In the meantime, here are a couple of games you can still grab.
* King of Retail [via GOG]
https://www.gog.com/en/game/king_of_retail
Another asset-flip workplace sim; the sort you've seen
dozens of time over. This one doesn't do anything original,
and its buggy and unfinished to boot. Only the die-hardest
fans of the genre need bother with this one.
* A Rat's Quest: The Way Back Home (Season 1) [via Epic] https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/a-rats-quest-f610d5
A short, episodic platformer featuring an anthropomorphic
rodent. Looks decent enough; good animation, charming
characters; sort of a gamified Pixar movie. The gameplay is
reportedly a bit simple and easy, but not every game has to
be Souls like. A must-play? Probably not... but maybe something
in the between-times when you've just finished a huge game
and need a bit of a palette-cleanser.
So... will this be the last 'Prime Gaming' post here on csipga? You'll
know as soon as I do! Find out in two weeks!
(Oooh, cliff-hanger!)
On 4/16/2026 7:48 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
Well neither of those are 'luna' games, so I suppose it might matter if >they're 'luna' games, or games you claim through amazon prime gaming
which they stamped 'luna' on the website of.
We'll see. Prime gaming has never been the attraction of a Prime
membership for us. It's a somewhat nice bonus, but I don't even pay for
it since my wife does and she barely games and only really on mobile >anymore, and more things like Duolingo. So it's not going to affect her >cost/benefit calculation unless I said something, and I'm not going to
as I don't think it's enough to factor in.
On Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:16:30 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
said this thing:
On 4/16/2026 7:48 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
Yeah, I'd never recommend anyone get Amazon Prime for the games (or,
really, at all. I'm not a fan of the company or the program). But if
you do have it might as well get all the games that come with it.
On Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:16:30 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
said this thing:
On 4/16/2026 7:48 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
Well neither of those are 'luna' games, so I suppose it might matter if
they're 'luna' games, or games you claim through amazon prime gaming
which they stamped 'luna' on the website of.
Amazon has done a piss-poor job of explaining what its 'we're shutting
down Luna games' really means, especially since they co-mingled the
Amazon Games and Luna branding several months ago. It's not clear if
'Luna is going away' only means the streaming service or if it
includes the Amazon Games platform too, or the entire Amazon Prime
Games freebie thing.
That said, looking at the Amazon page today I notice there are three
new games available in addition to the ones I already listed. Since
the cut-off date for Luna was on the 10th (and today is the 17th),
this implies that cut-off date does NOT apply to the Prime Gaming
stuff. So that's good news.
[Well, unless you hate my bi-monthly Prime Gaming posts...
because this means I'm gonna keep doing 'em! ;-)]
We'll see. Prime gaming has never been the attraction of a Prime
membership for us. It's a somewhat nice bonus, but I don't even pay for
it since my wife does and she barely games and only really on mobile
anymore, and more things like Duolingo. So it's not going to affect her
cost/benefit calculation unless I said something, and I'm not going to
as I don't think it's enough to factor in.
Yeah, I'd never recommend anyone get Amazon Prime for the games (or,
really, at all. I'm not a fan of the company or the program). But if
you do have it might as well get all the games that come with it.
On 4/17/2026 8:27 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
On Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:16:30 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
said this thing:
On 4/16/2026 7:48 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
Yeah, I'd never recommend anyone get Amazon Prime for the games (or,
really, at all. I'm not a fan of the company or the program). But if
you do have it might as well get all the games that come with it.
While looking through Luna, I discovered there's a few games I'd
actually be eager to play.
Alan Wake I & II, Goat Simulator 3. I'm not sure any would be very
playable with the streaming lag though. I'm tempted to try Goat
Simulator 3 at least as that's just goofing around anyway.
Also easier to just jump in and try them out too since there's no
download and installing necessary.
Yeah, I'd never recommend anyone get Amazon Prime for the games (or,I will admit I'm not thrilled with Amazon much either but there are some routine day-to-day things that realistically one can't get anywhere else because they've already effectively driven all the competition out of business. And there are some titles on Prime I want to watch so I subscribe and take the free shipping.
really, at all. I'm not a fan of the company or the program). But if
you do have it might as well get all the games that come with it.
On Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:29:18 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
said this thing:
On 4/17/2026 8:27 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
On Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:16:30 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
said this thing:
On 4/16/2026 7:48 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
Yeah, I'd never recommend anyone get Amazon Prime for the games (or,
really, at all. I'm not a fan of the company or the program). But if
you do have it might as well get all the games that come with it.
While looking through Luna, I discovered there's a few games I'd
actually be eager to play.
Alan Wake I & II, Goat Simulator 3. I'm not sure any would be very
playable with the streaming lag though. I'm tempted to try Goat
Simulator 3 at least as that's just goofing around anyway.
Also easier to just jump in and try them out too since there's no
download and installing necessary.
Yeah, that's the main use I've gotten from streaming services too (I
mostly use the free nvidia one). "Hey, what's GameXYZ like? Well, I
/could/ take two hours to download the 150GB required to install the
game... or just hop online and get a quick preview." Admittedly, the wait-times on the free-tier of GeForce Now are starting to get a bit
long too... but at least I don't have to worry about having the
disk-space.
The lag is noticable, but usually not TOO bad and, anyway, since I'm
mostly just previewing it doesn't bother me too much. In a lot of
games, it's more than playable and if I had no other option, I could
quite easily play over the cloud if I really wanted to.
But I dislike the idea of using streaming subscriptions as my primary
method of gaming, more because of how it takes away control of the
product away from me than technical reasons.
Which the looming June 10th shutdown of Luna is prima facie evidence.
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