Microsoft has reportedly stopped signing new Xbox Game Pass publishing deals, a move that could reshape the service's third-party catalog later in 2026 if the pause lasts.
According to Game Rant, Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani discussed the situation during a late June episode of The Business of Video Games Podcast. Jorjani said industry chatter pointed to "loads of people" who had been negotiating Game Pass deals before they "had the rug pulled out from under them" in recent months. The report says some of those talks were already far along.
Microsoft has not announced a public freeze on Game Pass deals. The claim lands during a rough stretch for Xbox, though. The service has already gone through a 2025 price hike, a partial price cut in April 2026 and a major change that removed day-one access for future Call of Duty releases.
A pause would not hit Game Pass immediately
Even if new talks are on ice, subscribers probably would not see the effect right away. Game Pass additions are often arranged months ahead of time, and the service still has announced and unannounced deals working through its pipeline. Game Rant says its own catalog tracking shows Game Pass added 47 more games than it removed in the first half of 2026.
The risk is further out. If Microsoft returns to third-party talks with smaller budgets, shorter windows or fewer day-one offers, Game Pass could become a less aggressive landing spot for publishers that previously saw the service as both a marketing push and a source of development funding.
That funding has mattered before. In a 2023 Xbox Wire interview, Rockfish CEO Michael Schade said the studio was able to add an extra year to Everspace 2's development plans through its work with Xbox and Game Pass. Schade said the extra funding helped Rockfish stay independent and ship the game when it was ready.
Xbox is already reviewing its spending
The reported pause fits the wider reset Xbox has been describing since Asha Sharma took over the business. Earlier this month, Xbox's reset memo said the company had spent more than $20 billion over five years on content, platform investment and hardware subsidy, excluding Activision Blizzard King, while annual revenue declined by nearly half a billion dollars.
That same memo said Game Pass had started growing again after a long decline. Microsoft has also said Game Pass acquisitions and retention improved after April's price cut, but that lower price came with a trade-off. New Call of Duty games are no longer set to arrive on Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass on day one.
Hardware costs are adding pressure as well. Xbox recently confirmed another Xbox Series X|S price increase for August 1, with the 512GB and 1TB models rising by $100 and $150 respectively. The 2TB model is being discontinued, and Xbox has blamed surging storage and memory costs.
None of that means Game Pass is going away. It does mean Microsoft appears to be questioning how much it can spend to keep the service stocked, especially when hardware margins, subscription pricing and first-party investment are all under review at the same time.