Microsoft quietly announced new pricing tiers for Game Pass this week, and the internet responded with the kind of collective rage usually reserved for a Game of Thrones finale.
The company is introducing a revamped structure that splits the service into Essential, Premium, and Ultimate tiers, with the top option now running $29.99 a month.
That's roughly the cost of a decent dinner for one, except instead of a burrito you get access to hundreds of games you'll never have time to finish.
The pitch from Redmond is that Ultimate now bundles in cloud streaming, EA Play, and day-one releases from the first-party studios.
Which sounds great until you remember that "day-one releases" has recently meant maybe two or three actual system-sellers a year.
The rest of the catalog is a rotating buffet of games you already bought on sale three years ago.
Reddit's r/XboxSeriesX has been doing what Reddit does best: writing thousand-word manifestos about loyalty and betrayal.
One top comment with 14,000 upvotes simply reads, "I remember when this was $9.99 and I felt like I was stealing from them.
Now I feel like they're stealing from me." Another user pointed out that canceling and resubscribing when a big title drops is now cheaper than staying subscribed year-round, which is technically true and also exactly what Microsoft doesn't want you to do.
To be fair, the math isn't insane if you actually play a lot of games.
At $29.99, you'd need to finish roughly two full-price titles a month to break even.
The problem is that most subscribers, according to their own play data, fire up one game for six weeks and then forget the password.
Game Pass has always been a gym membership for digital hoarders, and the new pricing just makes the treadmill more expensive.
Sony's PlayStation Plus has been creeping up too, and Nintendo basically never discounts anything, so there's no cheap escape hatch.
PC players are quietly smug because Steam sales still exist, though they're also paying $70 for early access games that don't work yet.
Everyone is getting squeezed, and the squeeze is being marketed as "value." What's genuinely funny is watching the same people who defended the Activision buyout as "pro-consumer" now discovering that a company with a near-monopoly on subscription gaming might, shockingly, act like a company with a near-monopoly on subscription gaming.
Capitalism remains undefeated at doing exactly what it says on the tin.
For now, the smart move for most people is probably to downgrade to the middle tier, wait for the annual holiday sale, or just buy the two games you actually want.
The days of Game Pass being an obvious no-brainer are over, and Microsoft seems fine with that.
Honestly, this is what happens when you let one company own the pipeline from console to cloud to your credit card.
The service is still a decent deal if you game like it's a part-time job, but for the casual crowd, it's becoming just another bill that auto-renews while you're not looking.
Final Thoughts
Maybe check your subscriptions this week — you might be paying for three of these things right now.