Microsoft layoffs: Arkane founder stirs up the subscription debate again

A hangover in the game's industry: following Microsoft's recent wave of redundancies at its Xbox studios, developers, and industry representatives are discussing how to find a way out of the ongoing crisis. Raphael Colantonio, founder of the French developer studio Arkane, has identified a culprit for the difficult situation the game's industry has been in for years: Microsoft's Game Pass subscription.

“Why is nobody talking about the elephant in the room?” asks Colantonio on X. “I think Game Pass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade.” The Game Pass has so far been subsidized by Microsoft to outpace the competition, Colantonio continues. He therefore does not believe that the Game Pass can coexist with other models in the long term.

If the Game Pass dominates the market at some point, Colantonio argues, then Microsoft will turn off the money tap. The result would be higher subscription prices and worse games. “Gamers like Game Pass because the offer is too good to be true,” writes Colantonio. “But at some point, they will hate it too, when they realize the impact on the games.”

Colantonio's developer studio Arkane (“Dishonored”, “Prey”) has belonged to Microsoft since the Bethesda deal, but he himself no longer works at the company. Nevertheless, his tweet has sparked discussion in the industry, which has also been picked up on Reddit and in the gaming press. Whether game subscriptions such as Microsoft's Game Pass are good or bad for the industry has actually been discussed from various perspectives for years.

“Nobody likes the Game Pass”

One of the best-known critics of game subscriptions is Larian CEO Swen Vincke: “It will be more difficult to get good content if the subscription model prevails,” Vincke wrote last year. “Subscription models will always end up as cost-benefit analyses with the aim of maximizing profits.” It is almost impossible to bring video games driven by idealism onto the market under these circumstances. With “Baldur's Gate 3”, Vincke's studio has developed one of the biggest gaming hits of recent years.

However, while Vincke's criticism focused primarily on the qualitative impact of game subscriptions, there are also concerns about their profitability: as part of the FTC proceedings against Microsoft's Activision takeover, then PlayStation boss Jim Ryan described Microsoft's Game Pass as “destructive”: “I've talked to all the publishers, and none of them like Game Pass,” Ryan said at the time. In recent years, numerous games companies have launched a subscription service on the market – including Electronic Arts with EA Play, Ubisoft with Ubisoft+ and Sony itself with PlayStation Plus.

Microsoft has been informing its employees about upcoming job cuts since Wednesday. A total of 9000 jobs are to be cut – many of them in the Xbox division. The hardest hit is The Initiative studio in Santa Monica, which will be closed completely. In addition, numerous employees at the studios Rare (“Sea of Thieves”) and Turn 10 (“Forza Motorsports”) will be made redundant.

(dahe)