If you were looking for more reasons not to pay for Xbox Game Pass or let your current subscription lapse following the service’s recent price hike, Microsoft has stepped on another rake as the company has confirmed it is removing the Xbox Game Pass discount for games and DLC purchases, according to IGN. In its place, Microsoft says it will replace the perk by letting subscribers earn points in its reward program when purchasing on the Xbox store.
“This is not specific to any one game and reflects all games and DLC purchases. Instead of a discount on the purchases, Ultimate and Premium subscribers will earn 10% and 5% — respectively — in points when purchasing select games and add-ons from the Game Pass library. Ultimate members continue to have 20% discount on select games from the Game Pass library. On top of that, all Rewards members will earn points when shopping [for] games and add-ons on the Store, while Premium and Ultimate subscribers will earn even more, 2x and 4x, respectively,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement via IGN.
Call of Duty’s community was the first to notice that Game Pass Ultimate subscribers were no longer offered a 10 per cent discount on COD Points and Blackcell. After, fans saw that this went beyond Call of Duty, as discounts for separate DLC releases for Game Pass games were also hit, a move that was not mentioned in the Xbox subscription service price increase announcement this past Wednesday.
In the original announcement, Microsoft said it was looking to evolve “Game Pass to offer more flexibility, choice, and value to all players,” but this move is doing the opposite by taking a consumer-friendly perk away and making those same players pay more for games. The blowback to the price increase was so bad last week, according to Wario64, that Microsoft’s website was overloaded with people trying to cancel their Xbox subscription.
