Twitch Offering Free Games for Prime Members

People love free stuff, and they love free games. Twitch, a streaming website that was pretty much designed from the ground-up with games in mind, is as keenly aware of that fact as anyone else and has recently announced that they’re going to start giving away free games every month if your Twitch account is associated with an Amazon Prime account, because, you know, Twitch is owned by Amazon.

They kicked off this program a while ago when they first gave away Devil May Cry HD on the PC earlier this year. But apparently it’s going to be a regular thing, starting this month and continuing every month thereafter. So, starting on March 15, if you happen to be a Twitch Prime member, you’ll get:

• Oxenfree
• Mr. Shifty
• Superhot
• Shadow Tactics
• Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation

And if you happen to stay subscribed into April, you’ll get even more games for free:

• Tales from the Borderlands (no idea how many episodes)
• Steamworld Dig 2
• Kingsway
• Tokyo 42
• Dubwars

An Amazon Prime account is about $13 a month, or $99 if you pay for a yearly account, so in that respect, you’ll be making your money back after the first month alone. Not bad at all. While Amazon hasn’t gotten into the world of publishing and developing games, this whole system kind of reminds me of what a good version of “Games as a Service” could actually be, if implemented right. Granted, Humble Bundle, EA, and Ubisoft are no strangers to handing out free games, so it’s not like Amazon is breaking new ground, but you get a lot more out of an Amazon Prime account than you do from having Uplay or Origin downloaded on your computer. That’s for darn sure.

Regardless, we’ll have to see how the offerings improve as time passes. Not that there’s anything wrong with the selection now.