// KOTAKU — GAMING
Online Store That Promised Games Were ‘Yours To Keep Forever’ Is Shutting Down
Legacy Games is a clearinghouse for all sorts of games you probably haven’t heard of. The online storefront and launcher provides deals on bundles of lesser-known indie and casual games that people can download for cheap. “Get up to 15 games in a single pack,” reads the marketing copy on the home page. “Hidden object, match 3, puzzles and more! Starting at $14.99. No subscription needed.” Over 1 million customers have been served. In the biggest, boldest letters of all, the site states, “Amazing games. Incredible value. Yours to keep forever.” There should now be an asterisk next to “forever” that says, “if you download them before February 28, 2027.”
That’s when the Legacy Games online storefront is shutting down for good. As VGC reports, the announcement was made on the site’s FAQ page this week. Game-of-the-month deals will end on December 1. Disc download codes, which the company also sells, will no longer work after December 31. Everything else goes offline on February 28, 2027. That’s the last day for people who have claimed games but potentially uninstalled them to re-download them and keep them forever before they’re gone forever.
“Download and install your purchased games through the Legacy Games Launcher as soon as you can, and no later than February 28, 2027,” the FAQ reads. “Once they’re installed, you can play them through the launcher any time. We recommend installing everything you want to keep while you still can.” All of users’ existing points, rewards, and membership perks will expire at the end of the year as well. Legacy Games also had a partnership with Amazon’s Luna streaming service. Anything there will also still be supported, but only if it’s been claimed prior to the end date.
“Oh yes, I have infinite storage available,” wrote one person on the Prime Gaming subreddit. “This is shitty business practice and we need more laws to avoid such behavior or have some compensation to the users.” Another person chimed in, “Bruh I hope GOG doesn’t end like this.”
While it’s harder to imagine the bigger digital game storefronts going bust, especially GOG and Steam, nothing actually lasts forever, especially in digital form, no matter what the marketing tagline on the website is. At least in the case of digital PC games sold without DRM, players can shift them around between their own storage devices without having to worry about launchers or redownloading them. It’s still a pain and not the way most people have been trained to think of their digital game libraries, which is instead as something that will magically outlast the crumbling physical world around it. Not so in the case of Legacy Games.
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