Arkane founder slams Game Pass following Microsoft cuts: ‘Why is no-one talking about the elephant in the room?’
The Dishonored co-director believes Game Pass has damaged the industry
The founder and former president of Microsoft-owned Arkane Studios has criticised Game Pass, and claimed that it’s been “increasingly damaging” the industry.
Raphaël Colantonio, who co-directed the original Dishonored game before his departure in 2019, made the comments on social media following this week’s huge cuts across Microsoft, which saw it slash multiple game studios.
“Why is no-one talking about the elephant in the room? Cough cough (Gamepass),” Colantonio wrote.
“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.”
The WolfEye Studios founder went on to state that he’s “fed up with all the bs [Xbox] fed us” around Game Pass allegedly not affecting premium game sales.
He added: “It’s a long game that involves throwing a tsunami at the entire ecosystem of the industry. Only the gamers like it because the offer is too good to be true, but eventually even gamers will hate it when they realize the effects on the games.”
Microsoft’s Game Pass model, which sees its new releases added to the subscription service on day one, has come under fresh scrutiny after Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs, which have seen games cancelled and many studios slashed.
In a message sent to all staff, Microsoft’s head of gaming, Phil Spencer, stated that the cuts were designed to “end or decrease work in certain areas of the business and follow Microsoft’s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness.”
Not everyone is critical of Game Pass, however. Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley recently claimed that launching into Xbox Game Pass had been “a huge success” for survival action game Atomfall.
“Microsoft has been a fantastic partner to work with, they’ve really leaned in to helping us,” he told GI.biz. “They brought their skills and their scale to bear on our small project, and it’s done really, really well for them, so they got a good deal, we got a good deal out of it as well.”
Xbox has claimed the number of hours people are playing on Xbox “continues to grow fairly substantially,” partly due to Game Pass.
