Microsoft announced this week that Xbox Game Pass is getting more expensive, because apparently the only thing rising faster than inflation is the cost of renting video games you'll never actually finish.
The Ultimate tier is jumping to $19.99 a month, and the standard tier is creeping up too.
In exchange, you get access to a rotating library of games and the privilege of explaining to your spouse why the credit card bill has a recurring charge labeled "MICROSOFT." Let's be honest about what Game Pass actually is.
It's a buffet where you pile your plate with 40 games, eat three bites of each, and then feel vaguely guilty while they quietly expire from the menu.
Day-one releases are the headline feature, but the back catalog is where the real emotional damage lives.
You'll download a 90-gig RPG, play the tutorial, get distracted by a YouTube video about blacksmithing, and never open it again.
The math used to be simple: pay one monthly fee, save hundreds on games you'd otherwise buy at full price.
That pitch worked great when the fee was cheap and the library felt endless.
Now subscribers are doing the thing Americans love most—aggressively re-evaluating whether a subscription is still worth it while refusing to actually cancel it.
Reddit, as always, is handling this with the calm, measured energy of a raccoon trapped in a dumpster.
One top comment noted that at this rate, Game Pass will cost more than just buying the games outright, which is technically true if you only play two games a year and both are on sale.
Another user pointed out that the service keeps adding tiers like a cable company trying to upsell you on channels you didn't ask for.
Here's the thing nobody wants to admit: Game Pass is still a decent deal if you actually use it.
The problem is that "if you actually use it" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Most subscribers are paying a monthly fee to maintain the *option* of playing Starfield again someday.
It's a gym membership for your backlog, and your backlog knows it.
The real genius move, if you're Microsoft, is that canceling feels like admitting defeat.
You keep the subscription because maybe this is the month you finally beat that 60-hour game.
You watch someone else play it on Twitch instead.
The cycle continues, and the price goes up.
If you play a handful of big releases a year and don't care about owning anything, sure.
If you're the type who buys a game, plays it for six hours, and abandons it forever, you're basically already paying for Game Pass—just in a more expensive, less organized way.
The smarter play for price-sensitive folks is to subscribe for a month, binge whatever you actually want, and cancel before the renewal hits.
Final Thoughts
Our take: Game Pass is still a solid value for heavy players, but the price creep is real and the "just cancel it" advice only works if you have the discipline of a monk.