Forget Steam and GOG. Amazon's Your Downloadable Game Source Now

At least, they want to be. Don't cancel your Steam or GOG.com accounts just yet.

For a while now, Amazon's been quietly and steadily gathering a loyal following with their DRM-free music download service, amazonmp3. Apple certainly took notice and offered me and tens of thousands of iTunes users the chance to re-purchase the DRM-free versions of songs at roughly a third of the initial cost. For me, the offer was $23 USD to take the DRM off around 80 tracks. WHAT A STEAL! Sorry, had to rant. I should've gone with amazonmp3 all along.

Anyway, Amazon recently rolled out their new Game Downloads Store.



The beta Game Downloads Store features hundreds of games, from action and adventure titles to card games and my favorite, first person shooters. Some are even free! But don't get your hopes up for F.E.A.R. 2 or anything like that -- the Game Downloads Store is taking a different tack than Steam or GOG.com, choosing to offer "casual" games that anybody can pick up, play, and put down without becoming a drooling addict and game modder. Who am I kidding? Some of the simplest games are the most addicting!

To take advantage of this service you just download Amazon's Games & Software Downloader app, install it and you're good to go.

Reading through the downloads store FAQs, I noticed that Amazon will keep a backup copy of "most titles" should your computer crash or you accidentally format the wrong hard drive (happens to the best of us!). I can't stress enough the need to make a backup copy of games you download from this service, so long as you have the manufacturer's blessing. We all know what it's like to lose data due to a computer crash, let alone our precious games.

We'll be giving the Amazon Game Downloads Store a trial run. After all, we want to get the maximum framerate in Chicken Invaders 3 Christmas Edition. If you've tried it yourself, let me know how it went, will ya?

If you're unsure if your gaming computer is awesome enough to handle even the most tame RTS, check its specs against the gaming PCs we've reviewed, just to see.

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