Former Arkane Studios founder Raphael Colantonio recently took to Twitter to voice his opinions on Game Pass. He calls it the “elephant in the room,” and that it’s an “unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade.” Baldur’s Gate 3 director of publishing Michael Douse added to this by stating that “the infinite money thing never made any sense” to him, referring to Microsoft’s Game Pass model. Colantonio agreed to this, saying, “I agree, and I’m fed up with all the BS they fed us at first like ‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t impact the sales’, only to admit years later that it totally does. ‘No s*** it does! Really?'” The impact on games and their sales after joining Game Pass has been a long-time contentious discussion in the industry, but Microsoft doesn’t seem to want to slow down this business model anytime soon.
I think Gamepass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by MS’s “infinite money”, but at some point reality has to hit. I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models, they’ll either kill everyone else, or give up.
— Raphael Colantonio (@rafcolantonio) July 5, 2025
Microsoft Gaming recently began widespread layoffs across its staff and several of its subsidiaries. Candy Crush developer King will cut 10 percent of its staff, which amounts to about 200 jobs. Zenimax Media was also impacted by layoffs and Microsoft will lay off about 4 percent of its staff which amounts to roughly 9000 employees. As a result of these layoffs, several games have been canceled across several studios.
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