Dead Island 2, Harold Halibut and seven others will be gone soon.
Easy come, easy go. It’s time for the monthly PlayStation catalog refresh, and alongside an infusion of new games for PS Plus Extra and Premium tiers, Sony has confirmed nine titles that will be leaving subscribers’ libraries soon. It’s a super-sized removal because five of these games were originally scheduled to depart the service in July, but Sony extended their stay through August. Call it a summer miracle.
The following titles will disappear from the PS Plus Extra and Premium catalog on August 18 (the first five were supposed to be removed in July):
- Bomber Crew
- Clash: Artifacts of Chaos
- Onee Chanbara Origin
- Roki
- Space Crew: Legendary Edition
- Dead Island 2
- Earth Defense Force 6
- Harold Halibut
- Unicorn Overlord
PS Plus Extra and Premium subscribers have until August 18 to get all they can out of these games, or just buy them outright. Well, as much as you can buy any game in a digital landscape driven by DRM and overt corporate control, that is.
Starting July 21, the PS Plus Extra and Premium digital catalog is getting Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Rise of the Ronin, Firefighting Simulator: Ignite, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, Dying Light, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector and Snow Bros. Wonderland, while Premium subscribers also receive access to Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Indigo Prophecy.
There are a few bangers on both the leaving and arriving catalog lists, and we can heartily recommend checking out Dead Island 2, Harold Halibut, Dying Light and Citizen Sleeper 2.
Note that this is a separate drop from the monthly games that PS Plus Essential, Extra and Premium subscribers can download from the PlayStation Store and keep for as long as their membership remains active. That current batch, available from July 7 to August 3, is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, For the King II and CrossCode.
If all of these subscription tiers and digital catalog restrictions make your head hurt, be sure to stock up on pain relievers before the next console generation. Sony announced this summer that it will stop producing disc-based games in 2028, all but confirming that its next console, the PS6, won’t support physical media at all. Meanwhile, Xbox is similarly building out its online and cloud marketplace, and even Nintendo is pushing digital purchases with comparatively cheaper pricing and game-key cards that require an internet connection for the initial download. Valve has entered the living room market with a SteamOS PC, and the digital-first handheld market is strong. Subscriptions and licensing agreements are the present and future of video games, for better or worse.
