Twenty-One. It's One More Than Twenty.

I thought I was done with posts about the monthly Prime Gaming giveaways but Amazon seem to have gone a bit nuts this month and they're making it harder for me to ignore them. They have finally got themselves together sufficiently to send an email reminding Prime Members of what's coming, so I no longer have to go to YouTube to watch a video or google to find out what they have planned.

In fact, as I only now realize, the Prime YouTube channel, to which I sub, has been silent since late last year. The last post there was in November 2023. I hadn't even noticed they'd given up. There was no announcement about it that I saw but that seems to be par for the course with Amazon. 

It would be tempting to say that it's mainly a problem with the gaming division, which has a risible record of incompetence and failure, but Prime Gaming and Amazon Games are entirely separate entities within the corporation and have separate reporting structures. Prime Gaming is part of Prime, which is the core business so you'd think they'd try to get that right, at least. Apparently not.

In common with other internet giants, Amazon as a whole feels like it's become less competent at communication in recent years but the company does seem to have a particular problem with gaming, which always feels like it's something of a bolt-on. Then again, at least it's not Netflix Games, which still seems to be flying well under the radar despite the money being spent on it.

After what has to be seen as a quiet period, at least in terms of my interest in what they've had to offer, August sees Prime giving away more than twenty games (One more to be exact, which I imagine is so they can use that tempting "20+ free games" tag.), several of which feature very well-known names or IPs. There has been a lot of criticism over the perceived low value or status of the giveaways in recent months but if you play games at all, you can't really claim you've never heard of any of these.

Picking out the highlights, or at least the best-known, we have two Tomb Raider titles, a Deus Ex and Baldur's Gate II. Among the more niche but still somewhat recognizeable names there's Loop Hero, Hard West 2 and best of all Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical. 

This makes for a fine example of why procrastination and parsimony sometimes pay dividends. I've had Stray Gods on my wishlist since I played the demo in a Next Fest last year. It's been on sale a number of times but never with a very large discount, or not one large enough to tempt me, anyway. Now, because I was either too mean or too lazy to buy it, I'm getting it for nothing. Great life lesson there!

I will certainly be claiming that one when it comes up for grabs in a couple of weeks. The offers are still staggered throughout the month, something I understand the reasoning behind but still find annoying. Other games I'll claim will be the aforementioned Baldur's Gate II (Enhanced Edition) and Hard West 2, both on the fifteenth of the month and Steamworld Heist, available immediately 

Although I could have sworn they'd given Steamworld Heist away before... no, it looks like I actually bought it. It's in my Steam library, anyway. Damn! Should have procrastinated harder. Checking back on the blog I see I bought it in a sale for 85% off so I guess that's not so bad. Would have been even better if I'd played it for more than fifty minutes...

The rest I'm going to have to check out before deciding. It's notable that many of the games this month have very high approval ratings on Steam, which has not always been the case of late. Most of them don't really look like my kind of thing, though, although South of the Circle does look interesting.

Here's the full list in case anyone can't be bothered to click through to the press release.

 SteamWorld Heist, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation + Chronicles, Gravity Circuit, South of the Circle, Loop Hero, Trek to Yomi, Kraken Academy!!, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, Beholder 3, Hard West 2, En Garde!, Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical, Grime: Definitive Edition, KeyWe, Figment 2: Creed Valley, Spells & Secrets, Young Souls, Arcade Paradise, INDUSTRIA and The Collage Atlas.

You might well ask why, since all of them are free, I don't just claim the lot. It's not as though they take up hard drive space. Claiming them just marks them as permanently available on your account (Well, "permanently" until you let your Prime subscription lapse, of course.).

Tidiness is one reason. I'd rather avoid the bloat of games I know I'm never going to play cluttering up my account. I already have more than enough titles there I thought I might play but now realize I never will. No need to make it worse.

The main reason, though, is that although all of these games are "Free with Prime", most of them aren't actually on Prime. Of the twenty-one games in the August offer, only seven are playable directly through the "Amazon Games App", (Which, confusingly, has nothing to do with Amazon Games, as far as I can tell, apart from them both being under the broader Amazon umbrella.) 

Of the other fifteen, eleven are actually available only through Good Old Games. All Amazon gives you is the Code to claim them there. The remaining three are playable through the Epic Games Store, ditto. I do have accounts with both GOG and Epic but I really dislike having to go there to claim and play stuff when it supposedly is part of the Prime service I'm paying for.

Since that's where most of the games I'm interested are, though, I guess I'll just have to put up with it. Virtual world problems, ammirite?