Game Pass Third-Party Deals Reportedly On Hold

Industry insider Fernando Rizo claims Microsoft has paused signing new third-party Game Pass deals. Developers in advanced negotiations were told their deals are on hold, according to Rizo — though Microsoft has not confirmed any pause and Rizo stresses it is not the end of Game Pass.

The claim surfaced on The Business of Video Games podcast (episode 59), which Rizo co-hosts, and was reported by Eurogamer. Rizo is a former Raw Fury sales and business development officer, now a partner at game commercial advisory firm Caboodle, so he sits close to the kind of deal-making he’s describing — but he’s clear he has no inside line to Microsoft. The detail matters, because this is credible chatter from a named professional, not anonymous noise, and it lands during a period where Xbox is openly rethinking how it does business.

What Rizo claimed

Rizo says developers with Game Pass deals in advanced stages — agreed in principle but not signed — had those deals frozen. He picked the rumour up at a trade show in Italy, which he hasn’t named.

Word on the street was that loads of people who were in the frame for Game Pass deals – ie. nothing was inked yet but the deals were in advanced discussions – everybody got the rug pulled out from under them.

Fernando Rizo, Partner, Caboodle

He also pointed to his own experience as a data point. Caboodle closed a Game Pass deal earlier in the year, and Rizo reckons it may have been one of the last to get over the line. “For the time being, it seems like Game Pass deals: we just did one at Caboodle earlier in the year and I get the feeling that [we] might have been one of the last ones that did,” he said.

How firm is this claim

It’s a rumour from a well-placed source, not confirmed Microsoft policy — and Rizo went out of his way to say so. After the original story ran, he gave Eurogamer a follow-up that pulls the claim back to exactly what he knows and no further.

I don’t want to oversell what I know – not privy to any internal Microsoft conversations. But I had spoken to a number of devs that had Game Pass deals in various stages of negotiation who were told the deals were on hold. I don’t personally think this is the death of Game Pass or anything, probably just a new CEO wanting to get her feet under her desk and everyone aligned on strategy before the Game Pass team starts cutting cheques again.

Fernando Rizo, Partner, Caboodle

That’s the honest version: he spoke to developers who were told their deals were paused, and the rest is his read. Microsoft has not confirmed any pause, the scope isn’t known, and there’s no word on whether already-announced-but-unreleased Game Pass titles are affected. Treat it as a signal, not a settled fact.

Why this fits the Asha Sharma reset

The pause, if real, lines up with a broader Xbox shake-up under Asha Sharma, who took over in February from Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond. A new boss freezing in-flight commitments while she gets everyone on the same strategy is the most ordinary explanation going, and it’s the one Rizo leans toward.

One of Sharma’s early moves was to overhaul Game Pass pricing. The Ultimate tier dropped from £23 a month to £17, with the trade-off that Call of Duty is no longer included from day one. The price drop and Call of Duty change was a clear statement that the subscription is being reshaped rather than wound down.

Game Pass Ultimate	Monthly price (GBP)
Old price (Call of Duty day one)	£23
New price (no Call of Duty day one)	£17

UAE and AED pricing for the restructured tiers isn’t given in the source, so check current local rates before assuming the GBP figures map directly to the GCC store.

The money problem behind it

The likely pressure point is profitability. Microsoft spent heavily building its studio portfolio — most of all the $68.7bn Activision Blizzard acquisition — and is now under pressure to make Xbox pay. That backdrop showed up in recent earnings figures, and it’s hard to ignore here.

Paying third parties to put their games on Game Pass day one is expensive. If the maths no longer works, shrinking the net and leaning on first-party games — the ones Microsoft already owns — is a logical cost cut. That’s speculation grounded in the financials, not something Microsoft has said.

Does this mean Game Pass is shrinking

Not on the evidence here — Rizo explicitly rejects the death-of-Game-Pass reading, and the signs point to Game Pass staying central. The Xbox Summer Showcase in June kept hammering the Game Pass availability of the games on stage, which isn’t how you treat a service you’re quietly retiring.

There’s a strategic logic too. As Xbox pivots back toward exclusives, strong Game Pass signings are exactly the kind of hook that makes the subscription worth keeping. A pause to figure out which deals are worth the cheque is different from closing the cheque book for good.

What it means for subscribers

In the near term, probably little you’d notice — the games already in the pipeline are still coming. The risk is further out: if the pause drags, the steady drip of third-party indies and mid-size titles that pad out the catalogue could thin, leaving Game Pass leaning harder on first-party output.

The other live Xbox change is on hardware. Xbox has raised the price of its Series S and Series X consoles, with the new prices taking effect from 1 August. The source doesn’t state UAE or GCC pricing, so confirm local figures before you upgrade.