Xbox Game Pass blir mye billigere

A week after new Xbox chief Asha Sharma said Game Pass had become "too expensive," Microsoft has announced a pretty significant cut in the price: An Xbox Wire post says Game Pass Ultimate has dropped from $29.99 per month to $22.99, while PC Game Pass is going from $16.49 to $13.99. Naturally, as the lawyers like to say, "prices may vary by region."

The cuts don't take the cost of Game Pass back to where it was prior to the massive price hike in October 2025, when Game Pass Ultimate was available for $19.99 and PC Game Pass was $11.99. Still, it's movement in the right direction, and a $3 price hike on Ultimate is a lot easier to swallow than a 50% hike.

The reduction in Game Pass pricing does not come without a cost, however. Beginning with the next release in the series, Call of Duty games will not come to Game Pass at launch: Instead, they'll be added to both the Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass "during the following holiday season (about a year later)," Microsoft said. The change will not impact CoD games that are already on Game Pass, however.

That's a big change that may blunt the impact of the Game Pass price reductions, but it's possible Microsoft has decided that the economics work out better this way regardless. Microsoft reportedly lost an estimated $300 million in sales of Black Ops 6 because the game was available on Game Pass at launch, while a staggering 82% of the game's full-price sales in October 2025 were on PlayStation 5, where Game Pass isn't available. You have to sell an awful lot of Game Pass subscriptions to generate that kind of cash, and this step back from Game Pass uber alles could indicate that Microsoft is finally starting to accept (or at least acknowledge) the possibility that the service has plateaued.

"Our players cover a wide breadth of geographies, preferences, and tastes, so while there isn’t a single model that’s best for everyone, this change responds to a lot of feedback we’ve gotten so far," Microsoft said of the price and game cuts. "We’ll continue to listen and learn."

The Game Pass price-and-games cuts are also seemingly part of the ongoing disavowal of former Xbox president Sarah Bond, who resigned in February when Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer retired. Sharma promised to"recommit to our core Xbox fans and players" when she took the reins in February, leading us to wonder about the future of the "everything is an Xbox" strategy formed under Bond's guidance. A month later, we found out: It's gone.

If you play Rust then the mere sight of the words "horse shield" probably have you gnashing your teeth and cursing the cheap no-gooders who rely on it. The whole thing is very simple. Ride a horse, equip a shield, and players on-foot have almost no chance against you.

Facepunch has already taken steps to address this on the game's staging branch, but for now it remains an issue in vanilla Rust. Cometh the hour, cometh the man: Take a bow, Rust YouTuber Fyx, who has, erm, fyxed the issue in their own inimitable way. They turned the horse into bait.

Necessary context here is that, while horses do spawn in the wild in Rust, and can be tamed with a saddle, and the fastest way to get one is to buy one at a Ranch. This is also the easiest way to get a thoroughbred (the fastest kind of horse). In other words, horses are valuable and desirable things in the world of Rust, and one just standing around with no rider is one hell of a temptation.

This is what Fyx relies on, and they've come up with four different methods of using the horse as bait to tempt players, who then get an extremely nasty surprise. Fair warning: a lot of videogame horses were harmed in the making of this YouTube video.

The first method is simplicity itself: disguising landmines around the horse. Basic, brutal, and oh-so-effective on the vast majority of players, who don't even get to mount up before they (and the horse) are sent to meet their maker.

Then things start to get a little more Acme Industries. Fyx rigs-up a false floor, under which are a whole bunch of shotguns that trigger the instant anyone steps on it. The horse is on the false floor. Players approach, some of them even hesitate for a moment, but again almost all of them can't turn down a free horse: they step forward to mount, and kablammo.

This is all proving rather profitable for Fyx, which is a good thing because they need to buy an army of horses to keep this up. Next is an even more elaborate shotgun trap, which involves the horse being left on a pressure pad. When the player mounts the horse, nothing happens…

But as soon as they move forward the pressure pad activates, and a door on the player's right instantaneously flies open and around half-a-dozen shotguns fire and take care of business. Even the most cautious of horse-rustlers (thangew) fall for this one.

Finally, a return to the basics. Sleeping bag on the ground. Remotely triggered C4 explosive under sleeping bag. Horse next to sleeping bag. Retreat to a safe distance with binoculars. Watch player approach. Detonate C4. Bye-bye!

I suppose what this video really showcases is just how many tools Rust offers players, and how many horses one determined player is prepared to sacrifice in order to take out those who would be horse shield meta chads. As Fyx himself puts it: "if you're tired of getting destroyed by the horse shield meta, consider this a public service."