{"id":342976,"date":"2025-08-14T04:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T04:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/342976\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T04:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T04:45:12","slug":"xbox-game-pass-may-make-devs-wage-slaves-says-ex-playstation-exec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/342976\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox Game Pass May Make Devs ‘Wage Slaves’, Says Ex-PlayStation Exec"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Xbox<\/a>Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

A sprawling \u2013 and quite insightful \u2013 article about the current state of the games industry has been published by GamesIndustry.biz<\/a>, featuring interviews with the likes of Circana\u2019s Mat Piscatella.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden\u2019s thoughts that are going viral, as he\u2019s chimed in with his opinion about Xbox Game Pass<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As part of a larger discussion about game pricing, the veteran Sony suit said he believes subscription services with day one releases could be a \u201cdanger\u201d and he likens the situation to Spotify.<\/p>\n

He points out that music is basically worthless these days, but artists have an \u201cadjacent market\u201d from touring, so there\u2019s still money to be made. The same doesn\u2019t apply to games.<\/p>\n

While he acknowledges there may be value in subscriptions for smaller developers seeking exposure \u2013 a Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/a>, perhaps? \u2013 he believes creators could end up \u201cwage slaves\u201d, with little incentive to bring value to the market in the hope their project could \u201cexplode\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of debates going on. Is Game Pass profitable? Is Game Pass not profitable? What does that mean? That\u2019s really not the right question to ask anyway.<\/p>\n

You can do all kinds of financial jiggery-pokery for any sort of corporate service to make it look profitable if you wanted to. You take enough costs out and say that\u2019s off the balance sheet and, oh look, it\u2019s profitable now. The real issue for me on things like Game Pass is, is it healthy for the developer?<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not creating value, putting it in the marketplace, hoping it explodes, and profit sharing, and overages, and all that nice stuff. It\u2019s just, \u2018You pay me X dollars an hour, I built you a game, here, go put it on your servers.\u2019<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really inspiring for game developers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We\u2019re sure these comments will end up extremely controversial, and there\u2019ll be a lot of handwringing over them.<\/p>\n

While we kinda get the point Layden is trying to make \u2013 is there still incentive for devs to overextend creatively and qualitatively when your product\u2019s sales potential is intrinsically linked to the number of subscribers who\u2019ve already paid for it? \u2013 we imagine most developers will disagree.<\/p>\n

Watch on YouTube<\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe to Push Square<\/a> on YouTube160k<\/a><\/p>\n

Ultimately, we think creatives want to deliver compelling products \u2013 and in some cases, guaranteed revenue may be a means of enabling them to do that.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s clear, whatever Microsoft says, its subscription cannot support the size of its development network anyway \u2013 that\u2019s pretty much the only reason you\u2019re seeing it bring basically its entire library<\/a> to the PS5 at this point.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re sure the debates will rage on and on, but Layden\u2019s clearly not compromising his thoughts: he doesn\u2019t like the concept of Xbox Game Pass, and we can\u2019t imagine anyone\u2019s going to change his mind.<\/p>\n

[source gamesindustry.biz<\/a>]<\/p>\n

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See Also<\/dt>\n
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\"Sammy<\/p>\n

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He\u2019s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image: Push Square A sprawling \u2013 and quite insightful \u2013 article about the current state of the games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[806,507,121958,53,16,15,289],"class_list":{"0":"post-342976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-industry","9":"tag-microsoft","10":"tag-shawn-layden","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-xbox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115025302309930856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}