Microsoft’s unpopular Game Pass price hikes have caught the attention of Lina Khan. The former head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took to social media on Friday to once again criticize the company’s acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard. “As dominant firms become too-big-to-care, they can make things worse for their customers without having to worry about the consequences,” she wrote just a day after the price of Game Pass Ultimate rose to $30 a month.
It was Khan’s FTC during the Biden Administration that sued Microsoft to prevent the $70 billion Activision Blizzard deal from going through. The regulator argued that further market consolidation in gaming would harm consumers, and ended up taking the matter to court. A judge ultimately ruled in favor of Microsoft, but that hasn’t stopped Khan and others from criticizing the outcome in the years since.
“Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been followed by significant price hikes and layoffs, harming both gamers and developers,” she posted on X today alongside a chart showing Game Pass prices doubling since the trial concluded. “As we’ve seen across sectors, increasing market consolidation and increasing prices often go hand-in-hand.”
A similar point was made when Microsoft raised prices last year. “Microsoft’s price increases and product degradation—combined with Microsoft’s reduced investments in output and product quality via employee layoffs, see FTC’s February 7, 2024, Letter—are the hallmarks of a firm exercising market power post-merger,” the FTC wrote last July when it was still appealing the merger.”
Khan isn’t the only one going “I told you so” this week. Shortly after the latest Game Pass price hikes were announced, players started circulating the company’s old quotes back during the Activision merger fight. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority also tried to block the deal over pricing concerns.
“Game Pass prices will not increase as a result of the Merger, and certainly will not increase to a point that offsets the substantial benefits of Activision titles coming to Game Pass on a day and date basis,” the company claimed back in 2023. “This is especially so given Game Pass will continue to be constrained by B2P [buy to play].”
In the years since, Microsoft appears to have done exactly that, adding Call of Duty to Game Pass but jacking up the price as well, even though players can still choose to buy the game à la carte for $70 on console and PC.
Microsoft might argue that $30 a month is a fair price to pay for subscription-based access to Black Ops 7 and hundreds of other games. It’s impossible to know without access to rest of the Xbox math, most of which Microsoft stopped reporting to the public years ago. All we know is that according to Microsoft, Game Pass was profitable and generating $5 billion in revenue a year, even before the latest price hikes.
