More than a year after Netflix added the award-winning game Hades to its gaming service, the streaming giant will remove the game from its service on July 1. No, I’m not crying, I just have something in my eye.
Supergiant Games released Hades in 2018 to near-universal acclaim before releasing the game on Netflix. It won numerous awards, including Game of the Year and Action Game of the Year at the 24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. It also made history as the first (and so far only) game to win a Hugo Award, an accolade usually reserved for science fiction and fantasy literary works, but which created a special category for video games in 2021. Despite the awards, accolades and its short tenure on the service, Netflix is removing the title from its gaming catalog.
The gameplay is smooth and fun, the story of a broken family rebuilt one run at a time was great, and the different characters you meet on your quest have such interesting backstories that it was easy to root for them, even when you had to fight and beat them. Hades is one of my favorite games, and one of the only games I’ve bought and played on multiple platforms, and its removal hurts.
I like being able to play this game on my iPhone whenever and wherever I want. If I want that same level of freedom after Netflix removes Hades, I’ll have to start carrying my Switch with me everywhere I go, and I don’t have big enough pockets to make that work.
Hades isn’t the only game Netflix is removing from its platform. It’s removing about 20 other games, including the Monument Valley trilogy, which released the third installment in the series on Netflix Games in December. Here’s a list of the games Netflix is removing from its service soon. Note the last day to play these games is July 14 unless noted otherwise.
- Battleship
- Braid, Anniversary Edition
- Carmen Sandiego
- CoComelon: Play with JJ
- Death’s Door
- Diner Out: Merge Cafe
- Dumb Ways to Survive
- Ghost Detective
- Hades (iOS) — Last day is July 1
- Lego Legacy: Heroes Unboxed
- Ludo King
- Katana Zero
- Monument Valley
- Monument Valley 2
- Monument Valley 3
- Rainbow Six: Smol
- Raji: An Ancient Epic
- SpongeBob: Bubble Pop F.U.N.
- TED Tumblewords
- The Case of the Golden Idol
- The Rise of the Golden Idol
- Vineyard Valley
Netflix Games has been in a state of flux recently. The company previously announced that its first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Spirit Crossing, as well as WWE 2K, would be coming to service later this year. But the company also canceled a handful of game releases on the platform, like Tales of the Shire.
Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said in the streaming company’s fourth quarter earnings call for 2024 that it would continue to adjust its games strategy, focusing more on narrative games based on Netflix content. «We want to do more recognizable, mainstream titles, whether that is licensed titles, like GTA…as well as home-grown titles based on our IP,» he said.
To that end, Netflix released the Black Mirror tie-in game Thronglets in April on the same day the company released the seventh season of the show. The game was featured in one episode of the season, and I felt the game gave more depth to the story the episode was telling.
Games are included in the price of a Netflix subscription (starting at $8 a month). You can access the games through the Netflix app on your mobile device. Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For more on Netflix games, check out what to know about Spirit Crossing, WWE 2K and the Grand Theft Auto series on the service.