In the very near future Apple Arcade will lose 15 games, according to a new section in the Arcade area of the App Store labeled as “Leaving Arcade Soon.”
So if you subscribe to Apple Arcade or think you might — it’s $4.99 a month — consider downloading those games before they’re gone.
And according to new information about the situation, some games may return, but Apple Arcade subscribers who had them will have to re-download them.
Try 15 games on Apple Arcade before they go away
The new section of Apple Arcade lists the games in the list shown on the graphic below. The section doesn’t say exactly when they’ll leave or why.
But if you download them before they disappear you should be able to try them out, even offline, without internet, as with all Apple Arcade games. But when they’re gone they should not be playable.
Apple has removed titles from Arcade before, though it has not previously announced beforehand which games would leave. And as far as we know, the service has never removed this many at once.
Contracts ending
Mac Rumors said it learned from an inside source that contracts Apple signed with developers soon after it launched three years ago are ending, and Apple is not renewing some of them.
But developers, who retain the rights to their games, may opt to re-add them to Apple Arcade — even the same day they’re removed.
In those cases, subscribers will have to re-download the games in order to play them because the games will then have a new bundle ID.
And whether or not players will able to transfer their progress in their original version of the game to the newly reintroduced version on Apple Arcade will depend upon the type of support the developer adds to the game.
Games leaving Apple Arcade soon:

Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Apple Arcade costs $4.99 per month. It includes more than 200 new and original gaming titles. All games are free to play. No additional in-app purchases or payments are required. Up to six family members can share a single Apple Arcade subscription through Apple’s Family Sharing features.