Amazon Luna+ giveth, and Amazon Luna+ taketh away. The service is now set to lose Resident Evil titles and other big games in June.
Luna+ was always intended to contain a rotating selection of games. But, for about two years, it grew pretty much monotonically alongside content in complimentary channels like the Retro and Family gaming channels. Altogether these channels once had around 230 games.
Between October 2022 and March 2023, though, Luna shed well over 100 games in its catalog and removed the Retro and Family channels altogether. While the catalog size appears to have stabilized in recent months, it is still well down from its peak. As of today, the remaining Luna+ channel sits at 109 games after recent additions.
We already knew of games leaving the service through the rest of May (8 games will have left total throughout the month of May). However, we now know of an additional 4 games that are leaving throughout the first 8 days of June.
Games Leaving Luna Throughout the Rest of May
- Rogue Heroes Ruins of Tasos (Just Left – May 18)
- Call of the Sea (May 23)
- Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel IV (May 25)
- Ys IX May (May 25)
We are particularly sad to see those last two titles go. They are great JRPGs. One other game in each of the Legend of Heroes and Ys series will remain on the service, however.
More Games Leaving in June
- DIRT Rally 2.0 (June 1)
- Mega Man Legacy Collection (June 8)
- Resident Evil 2 (June 8)
- Resident Evil 3 (June 8)
- Samurai Warriors 5 (June 29)
- Bug Fables (June 30)
These are 4 very good titles currently on the service. Resident Evil 2 and 3 are probably the top two games period on the service at the moment.
Unfortunately when a game leaves Luna+, it is gone from the Luna service entirely as there is no way to purchase the game. So, if you were hoping to complete any of these titles on Luna, you’ve got just a couple weeks left. Both Resident Evil games were recently added to GeForce NOW however.
What about the Rest of June?
Update: We have so far found 2 more games scheduled to leave the service in the second half of June. See the list above.
Over the next week or so, Luna should be announcing new games that will be joining Luna+ in June. The team brought a pretty stellar collection of games in April but followed it with a lackluster May. It’ll be interesting to see how they replace these titles which are departing.
Unfortunately, we think it is likely more games will also be added to the June departure list. The above list likely only covers the first half of the month.
In the future, we think it is likely Amazon Luna continues expanding with more of a Bring Your Own Games (BYOG) model similar to GeForce NOW and Boosteroid. In recent months, they’ve begun allowing anyone with either an Amazon Prime membership or Luna+ membership to stream games they own from the Ubisoft Connect PC store for free. And, just recently, they added support for Fortnite via a similar model.
Such a move should put the service on firmer ground. With this approach, games won’t have to rotate out and Luna gamers can utilize the underlying platform features (like achievements, friends lists etc.) from Ubisoft, Epic and others.
Thanks to @Musical1250 for the tip on Twitter – a great person to follow for cloud gaming content!
