Twitch Prime members can take part in one of the service’s biggest free game promotions yet in the lead-up to Amazon Prime Day. During a countdown that began on July 2 and will run throughout July 18, Twitch Prime members can download a different, free game each day. Once downloaded, they’re free to keep forever. There’s a wide selection of vastly different titles up for grabs each day, with a few bundles thrown in to ensure variety. The first game is up for grabs right now, and it’s “Pillars of Eternity,” which will be available throughout the holiday for those who celebrate the Fourth of July. There are some excellent games sprinkled throughout the month, and despite the fact that the promotion technically ends on July 18, the deals themselves span multiple days, just in case you forget to download one title on the day it debuts. Over the coming weeks, you’ll be able to get gems like the excellent cooking/RPG hybrid “Battle Chef Brigade,” the chilling cyberpunk thriller “Observer,” and a smattering of other fantastic titles you may have missed upon their original debuts. Each selection is PC only, and must be claimed while logged into a Twitch account that’s been connected previously to an Amazon Prime subscription. The full list of games on offer is as follows: July 2-4 — “Pillars of Eternity” July 3-9 — “Q.U.B.E. 2” July 3 – August 2 — SNK Bundle featuring “Metal Slug 3,” “The Last Blade,” and “Twinkle Star Sprites” July 4-10 — “Battle Chef Brigade” July 5-11 — “Manual Samuel” July 6-12 — “GoNNER” July 7-13 — “Next Up Hero” July 8-14 — “Uurnong Uurnlimited” July 9-15 — “Hue” July 10-16 — “Deponia Doomsday” July 11-17 — “Observer” July 12-18 — “Tacoma” July 13-26 — “The Bridge” July 14-27 — “Brutal Legend” July 15-21 — “The Red Strings Club” July 16-17 — “Tyranny” July 17-31 — “Broken Age” July 18-31 — “FRAMED Collection” July 18-31 — “Serial Cleaner” Aside from games, you can also pick up some free goodies for “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” as well as “Warframe,” though details on those freebies have not been disclosed at this time. Twitch streamers SodaPoppin, SeriouslyClara, and Elegy will be online streaming various games being given away throughout the festivities, with an official schedule found via the Twitch blog here. Amazon’s Prime Day 2018 begins on July 16, offering 50 percent more Spotlight Deals and over “one million deals” globally this year, for a wider selection than previous Prime Days. Deep discounts are coming to Alexa-enabled products like the Echo, Fire TV, and Fire tablets, with $100 off the Echo Show. It’s been extended this year to last 36 hours, with special deals solely for Amazon Prime members on DVDs, Blu-rays, music, books, and more. While the Twitch Prime deals will stretch on throughout the next few weeks, you won’t get another chance to jump on any Prime Day deals after they’re gone, so you’ll want to make sure you jump on them when they happen. In the meantime, there’s plenty of time to enjoy a free game each day, so long as you have an active Prime subscription and a Twitch account.<doc-sep>Amazon's Prime Day promotions are often a good indicator of which way the company's many-headed borg is facing, and this year, one Amazon entity is screaming quite loudly: Twitch. Ars' Jeff Dunn has already summed up a bunch of discounts and offers to expect this coming Prime Day, but in Twitch's case, we're looking at a Prime Fortnight. Starting today, Twitch members with their Amazon Prime credentials attached can claim a little over two weeks of "free" video games, each title arriving one day after the next. What's more, the 19-game selection is quite solid. (All of this is not to be confused with Prime Fortnite, of course, but there's one of those as well. Until July 10, "Twitch Prime" users can claim free cosmetics in Epic's mega-successful shooting-and-building game.) After its 2014 acquisition of Twitch, a $1 billion gaming-focused live-streaming service, Amazon slowly began attaching its many tentacles to the purple-and-white site. This initiative came mostly to a head in 2017 with two major launches: the aforementioned Twitch Prime, which lets Amazon Prime subscribers enjoy some cosmetic and quality-of-life upgrades while watching other people play video games, and the Twitch desktop client, which includes a Steam-like digital-game interface. (Twitch Prime's "free" games require the desktop client to claim, download, and boot.) The latter is arguably Amazon's point of emphasis for this promotion. Twitch Prime members have enjoyed bonus games and DLC through this app before, but never this many in such a short span of time. The promotion kicks off today with the "definitive" version of quality throwback RPG Pillars of Eternity, and it concludes with Tyranny, another throwback RPG from the same developers at Obsidian Entertainment. Solid and recent gems fill out the daily Twitch Prime bonuses, including the space-station stories of Tacoma, the Portal-like puzzle-solving of Qube 2, the quirky puzzle-RPG Battle Chef Brigade, the retro-platformer Uurnog Unlimited, the arcade-shooting classic Metal Slug 3, and a pair of Double Fine games: Broken Age and Brutal Legend. Advertisement Unfortunately, all of this interest may drive people to realize what a lousy storefront the Twitch desktop client currently is. Linking a Twitch account to the app is easy enough, as is loading it in Windows to download, install, and update claimed games. (Sadly, the client craps out while offline, with no "offline mode" option to speak of.) But trying to buy new games requires a redirect to a Web browser's ugly, poorly sorted "shopping" interface, which doesn't include any way to filter or reorder games based on popularity or price. Worse, in order to purchase a game through Twitch, you have to go to that game's Twitch portal—meaning a page full of "watch someone play this game right now" preview boxes—with a description of the game's contents and system requirements. You won't find a clean list of available DLC on many of these game-specific landings, either, and Twitch includes nothing in the way of user reviews or ratings. For all of the criticisms that Steam has drawn over curation and review-bombing, Twitch's game-sales alternative seems far from a worthy alternative, at least as of press time. Perhaps greater attention to Twitch's incomplete shop will get the rest of the company to catch up and become as impressive as this two-week game bundle.<doc-sep>
Amazon's Prime Day kicks off on Monday, but a number of deals are already available right now on Amazon. If you're a gamer, the best deal is all the free PC games Twitch (which is owned by Amazon) is giving away for free between now and July 18. All told, 21 free games will be available for Prime members in July. The availability windows vary depending on the game, but today you can download 10 games for free. Don't put off grabbing them, because one game goes away every day this week. If you haven't gotten them yet, you've already lost out on games like Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition and Battle Chef Brigade. But even if you've missed some of the free games, many more lie ahead. Gallery Today's your last chance to grab the challenging procedurally-generated platformer Gonner, so make sure to claim that one. The latest free game is Tacoma, an adventure game set on a space station. Made by the developers of Gone Home, Tacoma lets your character use augmented reality to view the interactions of crew members that had been on board the station to find out what happened to them. It's free until July 18. Free until July 16 is Deponia: Doomsday, a humorous point-and-click adventure game that involves puzzles and time travel. Then there's Hue, a side-scrolling puzzle platformer that has you change the color of the background to navigate past obstacles. It's available for free until July 15. The longest-running deal is a free SNK bundle that includes Metal Slug 3, The Last Blade 2, and Twinkle Star Sprites; it's available through August 2. To get those and more free games, you'll first have to link your Twitch and Amazon Prime accounts. Then head to Twitch.tv and click the crown icon next to the search bar. That opens a drop-down menu where you'll find your free games, along with any other freebies you haven't collected yet. Just note you'll need the Twitch desktop app to access the games. Even more free games are coming in the days ahead, including Broken Age and Brutal Legend. You can find the full schedule and descriptions of each game here.