Fears of the end of Xbox Game Pass are coming around as a new report claims that third-party developers who were in "advanced" discussions with Xbox have had their deals pulled out from under them. While it seems unlikely Game Pass is coming to an end in any form, it does appear that for third-party developers, no deals will be signed at the minute as Xbox's new leadership continues to figure out its forward direction.
The report comes from former Raw Fury employee Fernando Rizo, who was speaking on his podcast The Business of Video Games, in which he said that people who "were in the frame for Game Pass deals" ended up having discussions swiftly ended. Eurogamer spoke with Rizo to get some clarification, where he added that while he's not privy to Microsoft's internal conversations, he has heard from a lot of developers that apparently had deals that said deals were on hold.
"I definitely don't want to oversell what I know - not privy to any internal Microsoft conversations. But I had spoken to a number of devs that had Game Pass deals in various stages of negotiation who were told the deals were on hold. I don't personally think this is the death of Game Pass or anything, probably just a new CEO wanting to get her feet under her desk and everyone aligned on strategy before the Game Pass team starts cutting cheques again," he said.
So, don't expect the end of Game Pass to come about with these mass layoffs, but perhaps expect it to be more Xbox first-party focused, at least in the near future. While the Xbox Games Showcase this month seemed like all was right again with the green team, it appears we've still got some major growing pains to endure before we see what the future of Xbox looks like.
