Prime Gaming is Amazon’s revamp of Twitch Prime. The gaming-related membership that it offers to subscribers of its Amazon Prime service.
It’s essentially Amazon’s way of giving back to the gamers with a bunch of free stuff. And it’s something you should definitely take advantage of if you enjoy playing video games. Because there can be some pretty sweet rewards in there.
What is Prime Gaming really though? In this post we break down the ins and outs of the service. What it costs, who has access, what the benefits are and more. Prime Gaming is not a new service. Not really. Even before its name change from Twitch Prime, it had been around for at least a couple of years.
What is Prime Gaming?
Prime gaming is Amazon’s gaming-centric offering for Prime membership subscribers. Before Prime Gaming it was known as Twitch Prime.
But Amazon seems to have felt that more people were unfamiliar with Twitch than people that were familiar. Just about everyone however, knows what Prime is in relation to Amazon. So dropping the Twitch and slapping “gaming” on the end perhaps makes things a little more clear.
With Prime Gaming, you get a series of rewards for various games. These rewards are rotating and are not always the same. And not all rewards stick around for the same length of time as others. But, the rewards are always something useful for some of the most popular games on all platforms. Including mobile.
To put it another way, Prime Gaming is a collection of perks for gamers that allow them to claim free in-game content for the games they know and love to play.
What kinds of benefits does Prime Gaming offer?
There are two main benefits you get from Prime Gaming. Both are equally exciting and span across a wide range of game types and cater to just as wide of a range of players.
The first and most prominent set of benefits is the in-game content. Amazon and Twitch (which is owned by Amazon) give away a constantly rotating set of in-game content. It’s different for each game, and the games included are always changing too.
You’ll see it in the form of in-game currency, some of it being the normal currency you can earn by playing and some of it being premium currency that you normally have to pay for.
Sometimes you get item boosts, XP boosts, and other aesthetic stuff. Such as in-game costumes or gear. Really, it varies. So it’s best to continue checking to see what Prime Gaming is offering. A good suggestion would be to check once a week to see if there’s anything new.
In addition to in-game content, Prime Gaming will also give away free games. This is usually monthly. But it can’t hurt to check more often than once a month to see if any games have been swapped out.
Also, its worth noting that you can only claim the free stuff for so long. So make sure you pay attention to the times. You can currently claim new in-game content for Destiny 2. Prime Gaming is now offering a second month of in-game content for Genshin Impact, and League Of Legends: Wild Rift. Other in-game loot drops include packs for League Of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, Apex Legends, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla among others.
As for games, Prime Gaming subscribers get access to all sorts of games. For instance, this Summer you could claim Battlefield V through Origin. At the end of July, Prime Gaming gave away Battlefield 1, although that offer expired on August 4.
Currently, you can snag Control Ultimate Edition and Dragon Age Inquisition. Although those offers expire on December 1 and November 30 respectively.
How much does Prime Gaming cost?
The service by itself costs absolutely nothing. And the reason for that is because a Prime Gaming membership is just an Amazon Prime membership.
Like service that amazon offers with “Prime” in the name, it’s part of the Amazon Prime membership subscription. Which means if you subscribe to Prime Gaming or to Amazon Prime, you’re basically subscribing to the other one too as they’re just different sections of the same subscription.
All that being said, subscribing to Prime for these benefits is going to cost $12.99 a month, or $119 annually.
Is the in-game content cross-platform?
This will depend entirely on the game itself. But in some cases, yes. It is possible. For example, Destiny 2, DOOM Eternal, and Borderlands 3 are all games which were at one point included as titles that had rewards you could claim.
Destiny 2 still is in fact, with more rewards coming every month for the next year. All three of these games allowed you to claim the content on any platform where you owned the game. So if you own DOOM Eternal on Stadia as well as on console or PC, then you could have claimed the rewards and used them on either platform.
That being said, not all games allow this. Some of the games included are mobile titles. While others are only available on PC or console. With these titles the content you claim can only be used on the platform where the game exists.
How do I know when offers will end?
If you go to the page where all of the offers are, each offer has a date listed with it. So all you have to do is look at the card for the offers you’re interested in, and it’ll be displayed at the bottom of that card.
Using Destiny 2 as another example, the current offer that is available can be claimed until February 24, 2021. At which point it will be gone and a new offer will pop up soon after for the new month.
Make sure you take note of these dates so you don’t miss out.
Where can I claim the rewards once I’m in-game?
As soon as you claim the rewards on the Prime Gaming page, you’ll be met with a larger popup card on the same page that will tell you where to claim the items once you’re in-game.
There’s not much else to it besides that. Simply read where the items will be dropped off and once you launch the game, go pick them up and you’re good to go.
Do the rewards ever expire?
Generally no. In most cases the in-game offers that pop up will be yours to keep forever, or until you use the items if they’re consumables like XP boosts.
But in some cases the offers will be for items that only last for a certain period of time. Black Desert Mobile for example offered some rewards in the past that were only good for a certain period of time. Which meant you had to use them before they expired. Or you would have just wasted some free stuff.
It’s also important to keep an eye on this particular detail.
How do I play the games that I claim?
It used to be that games you claimed through Prime Gaming would be installed directly to your Windows PC. If they were Windows games to begin with.
Now though, it seems as if you will need to download and install the Amazon Games launcher. And any games you claim will be accessible through that launcher. Similar to Steam, Epic Games, Ubisoft Connect etc.
Are there any other benefits of Prime Gaming?
Yes. By being a member, you will also get one free subscription to a Twitch streamer of your choice.
For streamers on the Twitch platform, one way they can make money is by having viewers subscribe to their channel. Which results in the subscriber getting some rewards for Twitch, like special emotes and more.
Normally these subscriptions cost $5. But as a Prime Gaming member you will get one of these $5 subs for free to spend how you like. You will get one per month to use on the channel of your choice. Whether it’s the same channel or not. If it’s the same channel you will have to re-subscribe since it’s not tied to a payment method with auto-deduction set up. So keep that in mind as well.
2021-11-17 15:08:10