Riot says Amazon didn’t renew Prime Gaming promotions for 2024

Changes may be coming to Prime Gaming next year

Riot Games, the developer of popular free-to-play titles like League of Legends, Valorant, and Teamfight Tactics, announced that players shouldn’t expect any additional rewards via Prime Gaming starting in March 2024.

“Prime Gaming has decided not to renew our promotion, which means the last capsule drops will end in March 2024 across all of our games. We know this is disappointing, and wanted to let you know as soon as we could,” the official statement says. “You can continue to claim drops for the next few months, and any Prime Gaming content unlocked prior to March 2024 will remain in your account.”

It looks like Amazon is planning to make some big changes to Prime Gaming in 2024 / Amazon Games

What’s interesting about the wording is that it clearly states that Amazon was the party that ended the ongoing partnership between the two companies. This may indicate that some fundamental changes will be coming to the benefits Prime Gaming offers in 2024.

When Amazon laid off around 180 employees in November 2023, an internal email sent to staff and obtained by the media said that Amazon was “refocusing our efforts for Prime Gaming. We’ve listened to our customers and we know delivering free games every month is what they want most, so we are refining our Prime benefit to increase our focus there. With these changes in our business approach come changes to our resourcing, resulting in the elimination of just over 180 roles.”

It’s currently unclear what concrete form this refocusing process will take, but if Amazon doesn’t want to work with a developer and publisher of Riot Games’ caliber on promotions anymore, then it certainly seems like the entire Prime Gaming in-game rewards program may be in question – which, for many, is the main benefit from the gaming-related part of their Prime membership.

While there are nice offers like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Deathloop once in a while, on the whole the free games offered by Prime Gaming aren’t exactly what you’d call subscription magnets, at least for a core gaming audience. It would take a massive jump in both quality and quantity of available games through the service to make it the main attraction for that demographic. It is now in the realm of possibility that the free in-game rewards for games like EA FC 24, Pokémon Go, and Riot’s titles are being sacrificed to achieve this. Another possibility is that both parties simply disagreed on the financial terms of a renewal.

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