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David Goldfarb, the founder of The Outsiders, the studio that brought us the excellent rhythm first-person shooter Metal: Hellsinger has revealed in a thread on social media X that Game Pass affected the sales of their demon slaying title to the point where he is personally now against Microsoft's subscription service.
The whole discussion started when Goldfarb mentioned Game Pass as one of the reasons why recent Xbox release Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 isn't doing big numbers both in terms of player count and sales.
"Let’s start with Game Pass. Then let’s discuss zero marketing. Then we can move onto it being, whether you like it or not, a niche title," he said in a post. In addition, he added that Game Pass will eat "your audience alive on PC especially if you are short [game] with no replay [value]".
When asked why the team then decided to strike a deal with Microsoft to put Metal: Hellsinger on Game Pass day one if he was against the service, Goldfarb replied that he wasn't against it until they released the game on Game Pass and "found out how it affected sales".
The Outsiders founder did not elaborate on how much of an impact the Game Pass launch had on the sales precisely but we can assume from his change in position towards the service that Metal: Hellsinger did not sell well on PC and Xbox platforms where it was available through Game Pass.
We have reached out to David, asking if he'd like to provide some additional comments on Metal: Hellsinger's launch on Game Pass and will update this article if he gets back to us.
This is not the first time that we're getting such statements on Game Pass. Recently, Somerville dev also stated that Game Pass hurts sales. "I also think it hurts sales. Because a lot of people just go in and try it and they don’t invest. If they don’t like the first 10 minutes? That’s it," he said but added that the team made "a pretty good deal" overall with Microsoft.
Microsoft themselves previously admitted that Game Pass does indeed cannibalise sales of video games. The company saw a decline in game sales twelve months following their addition on Game Pass, which is contrary to the statements of Microsoft Gaming head Phil Spencer who said Game Pass actually boosts sales.
This is probably true in some cases and for specific video games but certainly not universally for every dev and video game.
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