From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


Amazon's Luna is the mega-retailer's game-streaming service where you
could buy games and play them almost anywhere; a competitor to Sony
Play and Microsoft's GamePass. It frequently featured as a source of
games in Amazon's monthly "Prime Game Give-aways"* so, if you were a
regular there, you may have gotten quite a few games that way.

Shame it's all going away.

Amazon has announced** that as of today, you will no longer be able to
buy any new games through the service (or acquire any Luna games
through third-party services. But any games you already own on Luna
you'll still be able to keep playing... until June 10th, that as. At
the point, you'll lose access --and ability to play-- any of your
games.

(Apparently if you linked your Luna account to Ubisoft, EA, or another third-party service, Amazon says you’ll be able to keep playing your
purchased games through those stores and apps. But not all games could
be linked, and not everybody has done that. A big advantage of Luna
was that you could stream the games through the Luna app and play the
games on almost any device. Now you'll need a PC and extra accounts).

Amazon is not offering any refunds or providing any way for users to
maintain access to their game library.

While I took advantage of Prime Gaming (which is separate from Luna),
I never bothered to actually create a Luna account or claim any of the
games that utilized the Luna service, so fortunately I'm not
personally too bothered by all this. But it just shows AGAIN why the subscription model that the industry is so happy to push on users is
such an awful idea.

But I guess we should have expected this. Amazon is a poor struggling
company barely able to make ends meet, with only a 14% increase in
quarterly profits (from $187.8 billion to $213.4 billion in 4Q 2025).
How can such a tiny company survive if they actually have to provide
its users what they paid for?!?



----
* 'give-away' used quite loosely here; the 'free games' are for paid
Prime subscribers only
** story here https://kotaku.com/amazons-luna-service-removing-access-to-purchased-games-and-is-offering-no-refunds-2000686688





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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 4/10/2026 9:30 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Amazon's Luna is the mega-retailer's game-streaming service where you
could buy games and play them almost anywhere; a competitor to Sony
Play and Microsoft's GamePass. It frequently featured as a source of
games in Amazon's monthly "Prime Game Give-aways"* so, if you were a
regular there, you may have gotten quite a few games that way.

Shame it's all going away.

Amazon has announced** that as of today, you will no longer be able to
buy any new games through the service (or acquire any Luna games
through third-party services. But any games you already own on Luna
you'll still be able to keep playing... until June 10th, that as. At
the point, you'll lose access --and ability to play-- any of your
games.

Wow! A huge blow against cloud streaming games. I imagine it's so they
can put those resources toward whatever AI they have. On the one hand,
I'm kind of glad to see such a blow against cloud streaming games. On
the other hand... a blow against people actually keeping stuff they bought.

(Apparently if you linked your Luna account to Ubisoft, EA, or another third-party service, Amazon says you’ll be able to keep playing your purchased games through those stores and apps. But not all games could
be linked, and not everybody has done that. A big advantage of Luna
was that you could stream the games through the Luna app and play the
games on almost any device. Now you'll need a PC and extra accounts).

Huh, I didn't even know you could do that. I stopped even trying to do
Luna games after finding the lag too much. I don't know if I even
claimed any games beyond playing a few temporarily free ones, like that
one batman game. If I could play it locally, I would've.

Amazon is not offering any refunds or providing any way for users to
maintain access to their game library.

Well, I didn't actually buy any, so no big deal for me at least.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
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^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


Two words explain why the idea should have been buried before it ever materialized: Input Latency
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Shame it's all going away.

Thx for the headsup! I went ahead and linked accounts, no idea what that means in this context, shrug.

rms

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 10 Apr 2026 19:23:56 -0600, "rms" <rmsmoo@moomoo.net> said
this thing:

Thx for the headsup! I went ahead and linked accounts, no idea what that
means in this context, shrug.

I have to admit, I don't really know either. Like I said, I never used
Amazon's Luna service. I got free games from Prime, but most of the
games acquired were for Steam, or GOG, or Epic.

Even more confusingly, Amazon has "Amazon Games" and "Luna"... and I'm
not entirely clear of the separation between the two. AFAIK, Luna was
its streaming service whereas Games was more of a traditional 'download-and-play' marketplace. But also, Amazon recently rebranded
its 'Amazon Prime Games' pages to be more Luna branded

[e.g., the old 'https://gaming.amazon.com' --which is where
you used to go to claim the 'free-ish' games now re-directs
to 'https://luna.amazon.com']

so I'm not sure that separation exists anymore. Will I lose access to
all my 'Amazon Games' as well come June 10th? I don't /think/ that is
the case, but it is not at all clear.

Again, it's not really a loss to me either way... almost all of the
games I acquired on the Amazon Games platform/app were either
duplicates or games Number-fodder I'd never play anyway.


#


<rant>

I've written elsewhere that one of the secrets to Steam's continued
popularity is the trust that the company will continue to exist; that
it won't suddenly disappear and take-away our increasingly bloated
video-game libraries. There's no guarantee this won't happen, but the
fact that Steam has been in service since 2003 is reassuring to
people. It makes them more willing to buy games from Steam. This is
something its competitors have to contend with; they have to reassure
people that their service will have the same longevity as Valve's.

And so far, of all its competitors, only ONE has taken up this
gauntlet... that being GOG. It's no-DRM message is basically saying
(amongst other things), "hey, we know we're a tiny company and maybe
one day we'll disappear... but if that ever happens you'll still have
access to your property because you can download all the installers to
disk."

All the rest? They're just, "Trust us, give us your money, your
investment will be safe" with nothing to back it up... even as we have
repeated examples (like Luna above) that their services are temporary.

Which, again, isn't to imply Steam isn't just as likely to disappear
as any of the others. Gabe could decide tomorrow to roll up the
company and what could any of us really do about? Very little. It
could happen.

But there's a perception around Steam that it won't... and I think
that's part of the 'secret sauce' that makes it more successful than
any of its competitors. And if Epic or MS Gamepass or any of the rest
really want to take a bite out of Steam's marketshare, they need to
reassure buyers that they aren't fly-by-night operations. And the
repeated shutdowns of platforms like Luna or Stadia aren't helping
that in the least.

</rant>

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 4/11/2026 4:40 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

so I'm not sure that separation exists anymore. Will I lose access to
all my 'Amazon Games' as well come June 10th? I don't /think/ that is
the case, but it is not at all clear.

Again, it's not really a loss to me either way... almost all of the
games I acquired on the Amazon Games platform/app were either
duplicates or games Number-fodder I'd never play anyway.

Oh shit, I hadn't thought of that. I know there's a bunch of games I
intend to get around to playing on it. Of course even figuring out what
is near impossible as their client is so shit it only shows a cover, I wouldn't know how to find anything other than scrolling through
everything or already knowing the name of what I want to play.

I guess I need to look through it if it might be going away, what a chore.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:27:00 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
said this thing:

On 4/11/2026 4:40 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Oh shit, I hadn't thought of that. I know there's a bunch of games I
intend to get around to playing on it. Of course even figuring out what
is near impossible as their client is so shit it only shows a cover, I >wouldn't know how to find anything other than scrolling through
everything or already knowing the name of what I want to play.

I guess I need to look through it if it might be going away, what a chore.

Just so long as our Legacy games aren't threatened. What would we all
do without 100 different iterations of the same hidden object game?
;-)





(note: I've never claimed any games on the Legacy games service
either.)


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 4/13/2026 8:56 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:27:00 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
said this thing:

On 4/11/2026 4:40 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Oh shit, I hadn't thought of that. I know there's a bunch of games I
intend to get around to playing on it. Of course even figuring out what
is near impossible as their client is so shit it only shows a cover, I
wouldn't know how to find anything other than scrolling through
everything or already knowing the name of what I want to play.

I guess I need to look through it if it might be going away, what a chore.

Just so long as our Legacy games aren't threatened. What would we all
do without 100 different iterations of the same hidden object game?
;-)

(note: I've never claimed any games on the Legacy games service
either.)

Me either. Going through the ones I did claim, I'm rather regretting
doing most of those, at least half seems to be 2d side scrollers of the
ones I even opened up the page for. Sure some in the arcade back before
1990 maybe. I rather liked Rastan in the arcade, which is probably the
last 2d side scroller I really liked. I can't even think of any I ever
played on computer or even consoles I liked. I remember playing Pitfall
on a friend's Atari 2600, but I didn't really like it, it was mildly entertaining for a few minutes.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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