According to Thomas Mahler, Microsoft’s subscription service could have been a major success, although he did use somewhat political language.

The current problems at Xbox, which have placed several studios at risk of closure, including Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Double Fine Productions, along with rumors of further layoffs, have now become a public debate among industry figures. In response to Duke Nukem creator George Broussard’s question, “Where did Game Pass come from?”, Thomas Mahler, CEO of Moon Studios, the team behind Ori and No Rest for the Wicked, tweeted a theory that Game Pass is a little like communism because it does not incentivize developers to go the extra mile. He reflected on how subscription services succeed or fail based on the quality of their content, and said Xbox had never really delivered in that area, citing Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield and its reception compared to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I mean, the Gamepass strategy could’ve worked if people would’ve shown up for it. Problem is: They didn’t and the software catalogue was just nowhere near good enough to make people happily pay the subscription every month.

It’s the same as with streaming in the film business:…

– thomasmahler (@thomasmahler) June 18, 2026

“The Game Pass strategy could have worked if people had shown up for it. The problem is that they did not, and the software catalog was nowhere near good enough to make people happily pay the subscription every month. It is the same as streaming in the film business: I gladly pay for my HBO subscription because HBO has fantastic content that I want to watch. I would keep that subscription just to watch The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, and so on. But with games, new is very, very important to players for some reason. If your new content does not come remotely close to the quality of the old content, you have a problem. You need the games made by your studios to become huge successes, cultural events that everyone wants to play, but what was the big Xbox game of recent years that was simply outstanding? That game does not exist. Almost every first-party studio has struggled in recent years. You would want BGS to create a Skyrim in space that should be better than Skyrim was, because that is already an old game, but instead we got Starfield.

And that is exactly the point: Xbox people would need to deeply and fundamentally understand players and their needs. They would have to understand what makes a game good and what makes it mediocre. They would also need to make good agreements with developers, so they have an active incentive to create huge hits instead of churning out mediocre content like a factory. In some respects, Game Pass is a bit like communism. And just like with communism, if you do not give people a strong incentive to roll up their sleeves and make an extra effort, they will not do it. And if you then do not get the required quality, the whole thing collapses because players will not pay unless you practically force them to by making content so good that they feel they are missing out if they do not try it” – Mahler wrote.

The quality of the content was probably not the main problem. Xbox has genuinely added numerous excellent games to Game Pass, including first-party titles such as Forza Horizon 6, DOOM: The Dark Ages, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, alongside third-party titles, not to mention that it even tried to add Call of Duty to the lineup. The bigger problem is that Game Pass faces a structural issue in both cases: hit titles threaten premium, full-price sales, while weaker titles may not be strong enough to significantly increase subscription numbers.

As for Starfield, the game was not developed as a Game Pass title in the first place. It did not reach the quality level that both BGS and fans had hoped for, but that has little to do with Xbox’s subscription service. It is more connected to the studio’s own difficulties in creating a new IP set in a completely different environment, which the game’s creator, Todd Howard, partially acknowledged a few months ago.

Source: WCCFTech