‘The Tension Is Hurting a Lot of People’: Ex-Bethesda Boss Speaks Out on Subs Like Xbox Game Pass

“I witnessed near-sighted choices.”

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• by Sammy Barker Yesterday, 12:30pm

When it comes to commentary on the ripple effects of Xbox Game Pass, few voices carry more weight than ex-Bethesda head Pete Hines, who departed the publisher in 2023.

Hines spent a hugely successful 24-year tenure at the firm, giving him a front-row seat to the fallout from Microsoft’s buy-out.

Although he confessed he’s been away from the juggling act for a spell, he recalled spotting “some myopic calls a few years back” that “appear to be unfolding just as I predicted”.

Below is the verbatim excerpt from DBLTAP, pulled from a broader chat that also covers PREY, The Elder Scrolls, and plenty else:

“I’m no longer inside any of these firms, so I don’t presume every insight from my time in the trade remains valid. Still, I stay plugged in enough to confirm I spotted certain narrow-minded decisions back then, and the outcome is tracking exactly how I warned.

Subscriptions have turned into the fresh four-letter curse, haven’t they? You can’t simply purchase a title. When a service depends on content, yet you fail to weigh the platform’s demands and its operators against the creators who supply the material—without which your offering is worth diddly—then you’re staring at a serious mess.

You must adequately respect, reward and recognise the effort required to build that content, and not merely ship a game, but deliver a product. That squeeze is harming plenty of folks, including the makers themselves, because they’re squeezed into an ecosystem that doesn’t properly value or reimburse what they produce.”

Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden voiced comparable misgivings recently, claiming the scheme risks reducing studios to “wage slaves”. He promptly amplified Hines’ remarks online, noting “Pete’s quote nails it”.

Amid endless debate, Microsoft has repeatedly claimed the service stays in the black. Yet, after several price bumps and plan reshuffles these past few years, the firm keeps its real earnings opaque.

PlayStation, for its part, has stuck to the line that it views the Xbox Game Pass formula as unsustainable. Early in the cycle the company faced heavy heat to mimic the approach.

It finally rolled out layered editions of PS Plus offering a rotating library, plus select day-one drops. Even so, it has steadfastly refused to cheapen its own tent-poles at launch inside the service.

Nationwide sub spending has ticked up lately, yet it stayed flat for multiple years beforehand, hikes notwithstanding.

In the end, we’d wager that, while Xbox Game Pass does pack serious bang for the buck, it isn’t the destiny of gaming many forecast when the generation began.