It seems as though the recent Xbox restructuring that will seemingly lead to a round of layoffs and even studio closures may have some repercussions in store for both gamers and game studios on Xbox Game Pass. According to Fernando Rizo, former CEO of Modern Wolf, and Shams Jordani, CEO of Arrowhead, the studio behind Helldivers, in a recent episode of The Business of Video Games podcast , Xbox has suspended all Xbox Game Pass deals with third-party game studios. Rizo says that he "had some nice dinners with industry colleagues" at a recent trade show in Italy, who told him that "loads of people who were in the frame for Game Pass deals - i.e., you know, nothing was inked yet, but the deals were in advanced discussions - everybody got the rug pulled out from under them." He continues, later saying that "I think they're figuring it out. That's my read anyway," and that "it seems like Game Pass deals—like, we just did one at Caboodle earlier in the year—and I get the feeling that it might have been one of the last ones [anyone] did."

Curiously, there were recent rumors floating around about an upcoming Game Pass tier that would feature only in-house Xbox Studios games. The new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, has also indicated on numerous occasions that she sees Game Pass as a way to grow the Xbox player base, specifically with a focus on more price-sensitive markets, which seems to suggest that this might be a temporary pause ahead of contractual negotiations or a potential Game Pass reshuffle that could result in other long-term consequences. One such recent change to Game Pass was the exclusion of day-one access to Call of Duty games from the subscription service, although that came with a substantial price drop for both PC Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. One possibility is that this may be a first step towards the rumored unification of PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass .