While cloud gaming is very much not at a point where I want it to be the main way I play games, if I ever will, I do appreciate having the convenience as an option. Being able to play a game away from my PC can be handy. So it's neat that GOG have announced they're teaming up with Amazon to make select GOG games playable through the Amazon Luna cloud gaming platform "soon". Sure, I might be tempted to take a nice stroll through Night City while slouching about with my laptop that absolutely cannot run Cyberpunk 2077.
GOG will launch on Luna "soon," they said in today's announcement. Then, if you have subscribed to Amazon Prime or Luna+ (a £9/month service offering a library of games), you'll be able to play certain games you own on GOG via Amazon's cloud gaming service. No need to buy games again, and GOG say your cloud saves and achievements will be shared across the two platforms. Luna won't support every game on GOG, only those which have opted into it, so some of your GOG games may not be available. GOG have initially only confirmed the Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077.
Cloud gaming runs games on remote servers, feeding your control inputs to them and rendering remotely before piping the footage back to you as compressed streaming video. This setup leads to lower image quality, extra input latency (affected by your connection quality and distance to servers), and an inability to futz with files for mods and such. While I can definitely notice the difference, many games are honestly quite playable—and some genres more than others. It's a trade-off which feels okay when I might be hundreds of miles away from my desktop PC yet still be able to play games like Cyberpunk through my feeble laptop that gets a little hot and flustered even just running Balatro. Amazon Luna also runs on tablets, phones, and certain smartTVs.
Luna previously partnered with Ubisoft, similarly letting folks play eligible owned Ubisoft games via Luna (or the Ubisoft+ library, if you
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