Retraction: It appears that sometime over the past several weeks, Luna has added warnings back to their game pages for games that would be leaving. That means my language in the below article was wrong. I took particular issue with the fact that there was no persistent warning given to Luna gamers that the games were leaving. I’m not sure if a warning was present on all games, but I’ll give the Luna team the benefit of the doubt that it was.
Shortly after our post a couple months ago about games scheduled to leave Luna, Amazon took down all warnings from the Luna service website related to games leaving. Unfortunately the lack of notification hasn’t actually stopped games leaving the Luna+ subscription and leaving the Luna service entirely…
Today, the following 7 games departed:
- Chicken Police – Paint it RED!
- Lumines Remastered
- Metro Exodus
- Obduction
- R-Type Dimensions EX
- SteamWorld Dig 2
- Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA
5 other games that were previously scheduled to leave on this date (that is – based on months old information – before Luna stopped showing any indication about games leaving) may have gotten a reprieve. Those include two Shantae games and two SteamWorld Games (unfortunately it looks like SteamWorld Dig 2, the best of the bunch, was not saved).
Based on that prior information, the following two games could be leaving tomorrow night:
- River City Girls (Oct. 20)
- Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (Oct. 20)
But at this point, we just don’t know for sure. And, that is a big problem!
Luna’s Communication Could Use a Boost
It’s pretty awful to think that Amazon Luna users could have been playing these games yesterday and have them taken away without warning. We don’t know why Amazon Luna has stopped showing the warning banner for games that are departing. But, it isn’t a great practice.
Unlike Ubisoft Titles which you can purchase from Ubisoft Connect (either via Ubisoft’s or Amazon’s frontend). There is currently no way to purchase these Luna+ games that have departed.
The State of Luna+
While Luna may have bright future in their white-label like partnership with Ubisoft, the Luna+ library has never looked so paltry. At one point in time, Amazon Luna had 300 games available across 5 different subscription channels. As of today, Luna+ has a mere 101 titles. And, it could dip below 100 in 24 hours. The lost games of Luna list now sits at 171 games.
In exchange for the 7 games removed, Amazon did bring back a few previously removed Luna+ games for a second run (which they are listing as “New in Luna”):
- The Adventure Pals
- Wonderboy: The Dragons Trap (they actually promised this would be coming back in August.)
- Overcooked (great that they got this one back!)
They are also, however, bringing three legit new games today:
While these aren’t exactly the AAA bangers you might be hoping for, we’ve got our eyes on that final game. You can check out the trailer below:
All in all, it was a weird night for the service. Let’s hope things stabilize a bit for the future.
