Xbox Game Pass Criticized by Arkane Founder as “Unsustainable” and “Harmful to the Industry”
Raphael Colantonio, the founder of Arkane Studios, isn’t happy with where Xbox Game Pass is taking the games industry. Even though Arkane is now part of Xbox, Colantonio didn’t hold back when he posted his opinion on social media. He believes the subscription model is hurting more than it’s helping.
In a tweet, Colantonio said that Game Pass “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.” He also warned that the service might not be able to survive alongside other ways of making and selling games. According to him, Game Pass will “either kill everyone else, or give up.”
Colantonio, who helped create Dishonored, Prey, and more recently Marvel’s Blade, explained that while gamers are enjoying Game Pass now, the damage could show up later. He compared it to how streaming changed other industries like film and music, where access is easy but creators earn less.
“It’s a long game that involves throwing a tsunami at the entire ecosystem of the industry,” he wrote. “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.”
He also brought up how music streaming works, saying services like Spotify seem great for listeners but are tough on most artists. “It only works for Spotify and the huge musicians and the major labels who have a stake in Spotify,” he said.
Even as these warnings come out, Microsoft is still putting a lot into Game Pass. Titles like Grounded 2, The Outer Worlds 2, and the next Call of Duty are on the way to the service. But Colantonio’s comments suggest not everyone in the industry is on board with this direction.
His words show that there’s still a lot of debate about whether subscription models like Game Pass are truly good for games in the long run.
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