For years, Xbox Game Pass was considered a really good investment for gamers to get lots of games for little money. The financial injection from Microsoft wasn’t bad for indie developers either. But that seems to be over now…
Since Xbox Game Pass was launched in 2017, it has been considered a worthwhile investment for gamers for years: you pay a small monthly amount and get a library of over 100 games in return. Actually an unbeatable deal, which was later even expanded to include the PC Game Pass. But similar to the streaming giants Netflix and Disney Plus, Microsoft has had to significantly increase the price of the subscription model over the years in order to make the service profitable. In addition to the many millions of players, numerous indie developers have also noticed this, who in recent years have increasingly relied on financial injections through Game Pass or exclusive deals with Epic Games. The golden age of these deals is probably over now…
Indie studios are worried about their future
In an interview at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the indie developers behind “Slay the Spire” and “Darkest Dungeon” spoke about their dependence on Microsoft and Epic Games in the development of their games. For smaller indie studios, exclusive deals for the Epic Game Store or financial injections from Microsoft to publish their game on Xbox Game Pass were probably essential to their survival.
Due to this fact, numerous indie developers have relied on exactly these streams of money in order to keep their game profitable. But these deals no longer seem to be what they once were, says Casey Yano from the studio behind “Slay the Spire”: “I probably spoke to five small teams during GDC, all studios under 35 people, and they all tell me: cuts, cuts, cuts, funding cut, talks that went on for a year only to be cut.
It sounds really bad. We are definitely very privileged to be able to finance our games ourselves. If that weren’t the case, I would be really, really scared right now.”. The game he co-developed, “Slay the Spire,” started off with slow sales on Steam before eventually becoming a hit when it launched on Game Pass.
Game Pass and Epic Games no longer make enough money
His colleague Chris Bourassa from the studio behind “Darkest Dungeon” also sees the future bleak. Accordingly, there are currently significantly fewer deals with Microsoft to finance games for the Xbox Game Pass. Yano adds: “[Die Deals] have declined significantly”.
It looks similar with deals for exclusivity in the Epic Game Store. Just last year, for example, the PC exclusive of Alan Wake 2 in the Epic Games Store caused a stir. This is of course not a popular approach among players and fans, but it often secures financing for the developers. But here too, deals have declined, as Bourassa adds:
“The gold rush is over. […] Maybe we’re in for another paradigm shift, but I definitely feel that the size of the deals I’m hearing about are significantly reduced compared to earlier days. “We certainly got our Epic deal at the right time.”. When the successor to “Darkest Dungeon” was released exclusively in the Epic Game Store, it caused dissatisfaction among fans, but secured the financing of the project. But what happens next after this bad news and what does that mean for us players?
What else will Game Pass bring in the future?
First of all, it should be noted that Microsoft has wanted to focus on the growth of Game Pass over the last few years. It’s a similar story for Epic Games, which wanted to build a platform that competes with Steam. There can only be two reasons why the deals of both companies are now declining: Either they believe they have grown enough and now have to become profitable.
Or the deals are simply no longer worthwhile for Microsoft and Epic because there are too few customers for the subscription models. Only the future can show what the ultimate reason will be. The Xbox Game Pass seems to continue to grow and Diablo 4 was recently added. What do you think: Is the golden age when you could get hundreds of games for a few euros a month or, in the case of the Epic Game Store, even free, over? Or is there simply a change in strategy among large companies?
Those: PCGamer
2024-03-30 20:21:15
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