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This is a glimpse at our future under Techno-Feudalism, by the way. Five companies own all the entertainment and charge you extortionate rates to rent it. Please enjoy these last few years of Steam allowing indie games to be published with $20.00 or lower prices - once Gabe Newell goes away, inide devs are going to get "Spotified" out of existence by whatever venture capitalist buys up Steam.
Game Pass was reportedly "profitable even when factoring in lost sales for first-party studios" as of 3 months ago. I agree with your overall point regarding the merger though
I am having difficulty believing that. Without accounting tricks I don't see that happening. The guy cites anonymous sources from Microsoft so I can't take that at face value. Later down in the replies he says this:
I don't know enough to tease out the implications of this but for me it's a sign that they are being disingenuous with their accounting.
Jez Corden, who's considered generally reliable in the gaming leaks and rumors community, is pretty confident that game pass is profitable.
And I think separating dev costs from game pass P&L is the more reasonable way to look at it, as Corden explains:
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