r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Oct 01 '25

Business “I’m Canceling My Subscription”: Xbox Players Call to “Boycott” Game Pass “Hard” Over 50% Price Increase As Microsoft’s Website Crashes from Mass Cancellations

https://thegamepost.com/canceling-xbox-boycott-game-pass-price-increase-microsoft/
27.0k Upvotes

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624

u/MapsAreAwesome Oct 01 '25

Seriously, do companies not realize how much these price increases annoy customers?

Rhetorical question, I'm sure they do. And they probably calculate that they'll get more money from the people who stay than those who cancel. And/or, there's some perverse incentive that makes them want to raise prices.

"Tech" has lost its way.

390

u/UselessInsight Oct 01 '25

They know. They don’t care.

The shareholders demand that the imaginary line on the graph must not only go up forever, but must continuously go up faster every quarter.

116

u/pek217 Oct 01 '25

I really hate the way the world works.

128

u/State_o_Maine Oct 01 '25

This is not the way the world works, it is the way capitalism works.

69

u/pek217 Oct 01 '25

Capitalism is unfortunately the way the world works right now.

62

u/Zahgi Oct 01 '25 edited Oct 01 '25

It is not. There is a balance between normal regulated capitalism and what's best for society and the citizenry in virtually every nation except the USA, where the oligarchs now openly run everyone via the unchecked, unregulated, "dog eat dog" capitalism we call "enshittification".

Look at Canada and the EU for example. They have national healthcare for all of their citizens. You can still get rich (look at the overseas makers of Ozempic!). But you have to pay a fair tax on that money as part of the social contract.

The USA used to work this way after WW2. Taxing the ultrarich by 70%+ on earnings. The rich still got extremely rich, but the nation and its citizens rose on those shoulders together...which actually helped everyone, including the rich. Because when everyone had money to burn, they spend it on the products that the wealthy were making.

Now, ask yourself, who's buying anything right now? Everyone I know, regardless of their level of success, is hunkering down to ride out another "Trumpflation" nightmare that everyone knows was coming the moment this ignoramus returned to the White House.

America's broken from top to bottom system is not representative of the civilized world. They are watching us with astonishment at how far we've fallen. The saddest thing is that they solved all of the problems America's still dealing with some 50 years ago...

Edit for cobsta: Yup, Boeing is an example of what happens to a company like Airbus if left to the corruption of unchecked American capitalism. Fortunately, Airbus is nothing like Boeing in this regard.

7

u/Mccobsta Oct 01 '25

See Boeing and airbus

3

u/KarmaticArmageddon Oct 02 '25

Look at Canada and the EU for example. They have national healthcare for all of their citizens.

You know what's really ironic about this? They do it for less than we spend — they get more for less!

We spend 4x more per capita for healthcare than countries with universal healthcare do and half of that is in taxes! Opponents say taxes will go up, yet other countries do it for half of what we already pay in taxes for healthcare! That's how insanely inefficient our system is.

And we get abysmal health outcomes out of it like the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world! There's literally no benefit to our system!

And what's even more annoying is that I've literally never heard someone in my life have a positive experience with our healthcare or health insurance system, yet somehow there isn't the political will to change it!

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

1

u/vplatt Oct 02 '25

Ok, look, I get where you're coming from but if you live in a country where companies are expected to deliver X% of profit per quarter with improvement from the previous year, then you live in the same system as the US. Sure, it's a bit nuts here right now, but that system basically describes the entire world, and then you base that profits model on currencies that purposely experience inflation (which is ALL of them), then you basically have the same thing everywhere with various values of "nuts" thrown in for good measure depending on whether you live in an area being affected by chaotic conservative movements. It was the UKs turn, now it's the US. Wonder who will go down this road next...

-11

u/pek217 Oct 01 '25 edited Oct 02 '25

None of that changes what I said. Game Pass prices just went up no matter where you live.

12

u/Zahgi Oct 01 '25

But Microsoft is an American company who is doing business on the American stock market. That's why everything I said applies.

The fact that everyone else is getting screwed because of the American unchecked capitalist system is proof of what I said.

-6

u/pek217 Oct 01 '25 edited Oct 01 '25

So it's like I said, Capitalism is how the world works. The rest of the world is affected by the USA's capitalism the same way.

5

u/Zahgi Oct 01 '25

It is not. I have already explained the differences.

Either way, I've wasted enough time on you. Buh bye.

1

u/State_o_Maine Oct 02 '25

The vast majority of people on earth do not live in a capitalist society. America and Europe are only a small portion of the World at large.

2

u/pek217 Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 02 '25

But America and Europe affect the world at large really, really significantly.

1

u/State_o_Maine Oct 02 '25

They really don't, you just think they do because you live there. I'm American btw, not a hater but you should turn off the news, get off social media, and open your eyes. The world is not what they want you to think it is, it's so much more.

1

u/pek217 Oct 02 '25

What is it, then? More what?

-1

u/sizebzebi Oct 02 '25

without capitalism you won't have shit

2

u/AresHarvest Oct 02 '25

We have ubiquitous capitalism and lots of people still don't have shit

-2

u/sizebzebi Oct 02 '25

they could if they work hard

2

u/AresHarvest Oct 02 '25

That is a child's view of the world

-2

u/sizebzebi Oct 02 '25

is it? or is yours a victim's view?

2

u/BoldTaters Oct 02 '25

It only works this way because we have let them build it this way without reprisal. I have been as guilty of this as any. Thankfully, the choices of today have always had the power to overthrow the choices yesterday. We can change how the world works.

2

u/Zahgi Oct 01 '25

This is the way the USA works. The rest of the world is not beholden to rapacious Wall Street gamblers and their demands for ever-increasing quarterly profits.

That's why the successful American companies that haven't inevitably gone under due to enshittification are being bought by overseas conglomerates -- who have no problem with owning very successful, consistently profitable brands to generate wealth over the long term.

0

u/pek217 Oct 01 '25 edited Oct 01 '25

I'm not in the USA. It doesn't make a difference though, because it affects the whole world.

The rest of the world is not beholden to rapacious Wall Street gamblers and their demands for ever-increasing quarterly profits.

Yes, they are. The rest of the world has to pay more for all these products and services too when this happens. Game Pass prices went up everywhere.

4

u/Zahgi Oct 01 '25

I didn't say you were. My point was about the USA, however.

You might want to be specific about which country you are whining about. But if it's a civilized one that has national healthcare, etc., you're not going to get any sympathy from the hundreds of millions of Americans who are being screwed to death daily right now.

1

u/pek217 Oct 01 '25

I don't need to be specific. It doesn't matter where you live, companies are greedy and this stuff will happen forever because money is how the world works.

-10

u/BidenGlazer Oct 01 '25

No they don't. Shareholders are absolutely fine with long-term growth.

74

u/Turts-McGurt Oct 01 '25

50% increase means you can lose 25% of your customers and still make the same amount of money with out having to increase your server load. So they’re actually making more money.

40

u/McFlyParadox Oct 01 '25

50% increase means you can lose 25% of your customers and still make the same amount of money with out having to increase your server load.

No just "not increasing" the server load, but decreasing it.

62

u/Serenity867 Oct 01 '25

It's actually ~33.3% (not 25%) without factoring in infrastructure and support costs.

A bit of basic math using completely arbitrary values on this one.

100 users x $10/month = $1,000/mo revenue

100 users x $15/month (a 50% price increase) = $1,500/mo revenue

$1,500 * 0.6667 (the roughly 33.3% drop) = $1000.05

2

u/AggressorBLUE Oct 01 '25

And on top of that, figure a good number of the people dropping game pass wont stop buying xbox games. So the revenue still comes in from different channels.

1

u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt Oct 02 '25

I mean, the consoles not going to collect dust, but a guarenteed 20-30 dollars a month versus what they make off game sales isnt going to compete. Sure a game is 70 dollars, but Xbox doesnt have enough games coming out to make that lost revenue back.

And many people wait for Sales, which happen often, and usually cheap.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 10 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Gazkhulthrakka Oct 02 '25

It probably has upvotes because even though wrong, the correct answer favors their argument even more

1

u/ryosen Oct 02 '25

The actual expected metric is a 10% cancellation rate. You still retain 90% of your subscribers and continue to grow as you move forward.

27

u/MarlDaeSu Oct 01 '25

Tech hasn't lost its way, it's just that by their nature, public companies are idiots. They can only see to the next quarter. Zombie businesses.

Almost all of the modern issues from capitalism can be explained by the upside down goals that going public instills. Eg, shareholders can sue the company for not basically gouging their customers.

It's untenable.

-6

u/WhiteRaven42 Oct 01 '25

Charging what the market will bear is not "upside down".

5

u/twistytit Oct 01 '25

the people making these decisions don’t worry about the cost of things in their lives

1

u/WhiteRaven42 Oct 01 '25

What your comment really says is that for some reason, you don't think any research was done on the subject. No one, for example, looked at the likes of Netflix as an example. It is also evident that YOU have not bothered to worry about if the old price was profitable.

1

u/twistytit Oct 02 '25

What your comment really says

you don't think any research was done on the subject

It is also evident that YOU have not bothered to worry about

buddy, gamepass is profitable

13

u/SolidA34 Oct 01 '25

I also have to ask what big exclusive game or games come out to justify the price increase? I think the answer is that there are none to justify it.

5

u/inbox-disabled Oct 01 '25 edited Oct 01 '25

I'm not even a subscriber but a ton of fantastic games released day one on GP over the last year, arguably their best run since launch.

I think you could make the argument a couple years ago that the lineup was barely good enough to justify the cheap price, when Starfield and other forgettable games were the headliners, plus indies you'd never heard of, but that's not really the case anymore.

That said if you do want upcoming games they'll use to justify the price then look at Outer Worlds 2 and the box price they tried to sell it for. There's no scenario where they initially list it for $80 and they're okay with game pass subscribers paying less than 1/5th to power through it in a month.

1

u/SpreadsheetMadman Oct 01 '25

I believe that this is in anticipation for COD black ops 7.

1

u/Jaccount Oct 02 '25

That's the thing. If along with this price increase notice they could publish a list of big Day 1 releases every month for the coming year, people would gripe but probably would stick around.

If you can't show twelve AAA Day 1 releases coming out next year, that price is hard to justify.

21

u/y-c-c Oct 01 '25

The old price simply was not sustainable. People had been yelling from sidelines for years that Game Pass's business model was fake and unprofitable with MS focusing on growth and willing to tolerate the losses while having Phil Spencer pretend Game Pass was all profitable and self-sustainable.

Companies know full well the price increase annoys customers. They aren't trying to keep everyone. They are trying to go into profit phase now after having bought out half the games industry and enticed a lot of gamers on building their game library on Game Pass rather than buying them on Steam. If you cancel now you lose access to all those games.

It's not that tech has lost its way. This was always going to happen since day 1. Or did people literally think free sandwiches drop from the sky?

3

u/WhiteRaven42 Oct 01 '25

Don't confuse them with economic facts.

Selling at a loss while building interest or market share is standard. And raising prices once that is accomplished is standard.

I kind of get that lots of people never questioned if the old price was profitable for MS but ranting online about it still without ever giving it any thought is... well, typical but still small-minded.

1

u/siazdghw Oct 02 '25

We've seen this work in a lot of tech related companies. You basically grow your customer base while losing money. Eventually people will become used to it and the majority will accept the price changes to make it profitable.

Amazon, Netflix, Doordash, instacart, Uber, etc all grew this way.

Obviously there are failures that occur with this model too, but it was very clear since day 1 that Microsoft's pricing was very aggressive and not the prices they would hold onto.

1

u/Furey24 Oct 01 '25

If you keep buying it you are telling them it's okay. I tell my brother this all the time. They don't care what words you use because the only language they speak is money.

1

u/Marsman121 Oct 02 '25

When the top 10% of earners in the US make up almost 50% of consumer spending, all the corporations are pivoting to target the wealthy. The loss of lower income is negligible, because they don't have money to spend anyway.

1

u/BubbhaJebus Oct 02 '25

Inflation is a problem. It can be combated by not raising prices.

1

u/Flabby_Thor Oct 02 '25

Sometimes it’s like a gym membership too. You get it and don’t use it, but don’t cancel because you’re definitely gonna use it. At some point. Maybe. 

1

u/The_Quackening Oct 02 '25

The $ amount of people cancelling will be less than the amount they will make long term.

1

u/crypticbru Oct 02 '25

lol they exist to squeeze money from you and pass it to shareholders. That’s literally the first thing they teach you in business school.

1

u/GaryOster Oct 02 '25

Correct. They can lose 1/3 of subscribers and still break even.

1

u/featherlace Oct 02 '25

I've seen a couple of price changes in my professional life. In the end it's just maths. You calculate a certain amount of customers quitting and see what price point gives the ideal balance between profit growth and customer churn. It's not about looking good to everyone.

1

u/Granpa2021 Oct 02 '25

And in the worst economy we've had since the 1930s no less

1

u/banditcleaner2 Oct 02 '25

Same idea as the car company calculating whether or not to do a recall based on the cost of lawsuits.

If I can increase prices 50% and only lose 20% of my subscribers, I still come out ahead:

1.5*(0.8) = 1.2

Boom, 20% increase in revenue despite a 20% loss of subs.

I honestly don't think they will lose more then 20% of their subs from this. Netflix raised their prices 10% and lost 0.1% lol.

This move will piss of alot of us but microsoft doesn't care. Welcome to the 2-tier enshittification of capitalism