If you were an indie developer counting on a Game Pass deal to cushion your next launch, this week's news is a gut punch. Fernando Rizo, Partner at Kaboodle Games, went on record saying that developers who had Game Pass negotiations well underway, nothing signed yet but deep in advanced discussions, got those conversations quietly killed. "Everybody got the rug pulled out from under them," Rizo said.
Rizo made the comments on The Business of Video Game Podcast, hosted by Shams Jorjani, CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios. When Jorjani pressed him on whether new deals are dead entirely, Rizo was measured: "I think they're on pause. I think they're figuring it out." He added that Kaboodle signed a Game Pass deal earlier this year and said he gets the feeling “it might have been one of the last ones that they did.”
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What this means for indie developers specifically
Here's the thing: Game Pass deals have functioned almost like a safety net for smaller studios. Getting your game onto the service means guaranteed upfront money regardless of how many players actually download it. For an indie team shipping a mid-budget title into a crowded market, that certainty can be the difference between making payroll and not.
With those deals apparently on hold, developers who had been planning their financial runway around an expected Game Pass payment are now in a difficult spot. The rug-pull phrasing Rizo used is blunt, but it tracks. If your business model assumed that money was coming and it suddenly isn't, you're replanning your entire release strategy.
The broader Microsoft reset happening in parallel
This isn't happening in a vacuum. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has publicly described the company as going through a "reset" of its games business. Reports circulating this week suggest that reset is about to get significantly more painful, with potential studio closures and job losses expected within weeks. Studios including Compulsion Games, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory have been named in connection with those cuts.
Microsoft also recently announced that future Call of Duty titles won't land on Game Pass at launch, with new entries being added the following holiday season instead, which is potentially up to a year after release. That's a meaningful shift in how the service positions its biggest third-party draws.
Game Pass subscription prices were cut across the board after a previous increase, which signals Microsoft is trying to hold onto subscribers while simultaneously pulling back on the content spend that made the service attractive in the first place.
Console prices going up while content investment goes down
The timing makes the picture harder to read for Xbox fans. Just last week, Microsoft announced Xbox console prices are rising by $100 to $150, citing industry-wide materials shortages. Paying more for hardware while the service loses third-party content and launch-day Call of Duty access is a combination that will test subscriber patience.
For context on what Xbox's first-party slate looks like heading into this period, the Forza Horizon 6 preload guide breaks down file sizes and download timing for one of the platform's biggest upcoming exclusives. First-party titles are clearly where Microsoft is doubling down, which makes the pullback on third-party deals feel even more deliberate.
What players and developers should watch next
The key here is that Rizo framed this as a pause, not a permanent shutdown. Microsoft may be restructuring how it funds and prices third-party Game Pass agreements rather than abandoning the model entirely. But "figuring it out" while developers are mid-negotiation is cold comfort for studios that built their 2026 financial plans around a deal that's no longer happening.
For players, the short-term effect is less visible. The library won't empty overnight. But the pipeline of third-party titles coming to the service over the next 12 to 18 months could look noticeably thinner if new deals aren't getting signed right now. Indie titles especially, the kind of discovery-driven games that Game Pass has been genuinely good at surfacing, may start showing up less frequently.
Microsoft hasn't commented publicly, and the full shape of the business reset won't be clear until the studio situation resolves. Keep an eye on the Forza Horizon 6 Car Pass and other first-party content drops as a signal of where Xbox is concentrating its remaining content investment. For everything else happening across the industry right now, our reviews hub has the latest coverage.
