Microsoft, which remains a BDS priority target after barring Israel from deploying some – but not all – of its products in service of Palestinian mass surveillance, and which has fired and reported to police multiple employees protesting its involvement in the genocide, stepped in it again today. If it feels like it’s only been a few months since the last time Xbox was at the vanguard of Microsoft’s ceaseless woes, that’s because it has. Mass layoffs and studio closures, turns out, did not sufficiently satiate Microsoft’s almighty Line – which remains buoyed, increasingly precariously, by the AI bubble. So now the company is trying a good old-fashioned price hike. Many Game Pass customers have had enough.
Today Microsoft announced a series of confusing changes to Game Pass, principal among them a 50-percent price increase to Game Pass Ultimate that brings it up to $30 per month, or $360 per year. The company is trying to justify the bump with a plethora of new games, as well as a Fortnite Crew membership that includes battle pass access and V-Bucks. PC Game Pass, meanwhile, is also going up in price, from $12 to $16.50, but otherwise remaining the same.
But that’s not all! Other tiers are getting renamed: Game Pass Core is now Game Pass Essential, while Game Pass Standard is now Game Pass Premium – because surely no one will struggle to discern the difference between something that is essential (a colloquial synonym for best), premium (a colloquial synonym for best), and ultimate (a colloquial synonym for best). Essential and Premium are also adding new games, and while the latter will gain Xbox-published games within a year of release, only Ultimate includes day-one releases.
This announcement has gone over spectacularly, in the sense that a house fire could be described as such so long as you are not the one inside the house. Mat Piscatella, senior director at analytics firm Circana, pointed out that as of Q3 2025 a whopping 58 percent of those who’ve unsubscribed from Game Pass have cited budgetary concerns, and today so many leaped to cancel that they overloaded the website. This is not surprising: Beyond simple sticker shock, more granular math doesn’t really work out in your favor unless you’re a power user.
"$30 is a redline," accessibility-focused creator and consultant Steve Saylor wrote on Bluesky. "There was a time where you could play 2-3 games a year and Game Pass would pay for itself. Now it's 5 games priced at $70 a game."
"From a moral standpoint, you really oughta consider losing your Game Pass subscription due to the BDS boycott," wrote voice actor Wes Wiggins. "[But even] not from a moral standpoint, what the fuck. ... That's one and a half Silksongs a month. That's three Yakuza 0s a month. That is, funnily enough, 360 dollars a year."
This is the second Game Pass price hike in just over a year, a severe impediment to Microsoft’s strategy of turning everything – including cars, for some reason – into an Xbox. After all, if you’re trying to expand your user base beyond the confines of a specific piece of hardware, you’d want to keep your primary offering well outside the ballpark price range of said hardware. In related news, tariffs recently forced Microsoft to raise the price of the Xbox Series X to $650 and the Xbox Series S to $400. Late last month, Microsoft also announced that the Xbox-branded versions of the ROG Ally handheld coming in at $600 or $1,000 depending on how many bells and whistles you want. In other words, an impulse buy – assuming the thing you’re impulsively purchasing is a Steam Deck.
There was no reason to put up with Microsoft’s endlessly enshittified operation months ago, when the company unceremoniously laid off 9,100 people, and there are even fewer now. Studios, hollowed out by layoffs, are footing the bill for the gargantuan $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard purchase, and customers are paying for Game Pass’ lack of actual profitability (once you subtract Microsoft’s fake accounting math). All of that, as well as productivity programs people depend on like Word and Excel, is then being fed into the AI meat grinder, ensuring that the worst is yet to come.
Today Israel intercepted a flotilla meant to provide aid to starving Palestinians and arrested those involved. Fuck that and fuck anyone who supports it, especially materially. That and everything else we’ve talked about in mind, the math is not difficult: Fuck Microsoft.
