Weekend Highlights (July 5-6)

The founder of Arkane Studios stated that Game Pass harms the industry, the European publishers' association pointed out weaknesses in the Stop Killing Games initiative, Stardew Valley became the highest-rated game on Steam — here's a recap of the main events in the gaming industry over the past weekend.

• Raphael Colantonio criticized Game Pass. In a post on X, the founder of Arkane Studios called the subscription service an "elephant in the room" that many ignore, despite it allegedly causing harm to the gaming industry for nearly a decade. According to the developer, Game Pass survives solely on Microsoft's "infinite" money, but one day it will face reality. "I don't think Game Pass can coexist with other [distribution] models: it will either kill them or give up," Colantonio concluded.
• More than a year ago, Ross Scott launched a petition campaign to preserve games called Stop Killing Games. Recently, his initiative surpassed one million signatures, which did not go unnoticed by the European publishers' association, Video Games Europe, composed of companies like Microsoft, Sony, Take-Two, EA, and other major publishers. The association issued a statement opposing Stop Killing Games in its current form. It noted that the decision to shut down game servers is never taken lightly and usually occurs when titles are no longer profitable. Although players have asked for alternative solutions, like allowing private server launches, this is not always possible since third-party server owners cannot guarantee user data protection. Video Games Europe also pointed out that the obligation to indefinitely support multiplayer games would make their development prohibitively expensive. Scott has already reviewed the association's statement and called their arguments weak.
• A former Turn 10 Studios employee reported that Microsoft disbanded the Forza Motorsport team. According to him, the studio will now support Forza Horizon. He did not specify how many people lost their jobs. Previously, The Verge found out that Microsoft laid off over 70 employees from Turn 10 Studios.
• Stardew Valley climbed to the top spot in the list of highest-rated games on Steam according to Steam250. At the time of writing, its rating is 8.87 out of 10. This figure is derived from 98% "overwhelmingly positive" reviews based on 897.9 thousand reviews. The farm simulator surpassed games like Portal 2 (8.85), Terraria (8.82), and People Playground (8.81) in the rankings. However, in a similar ranking from SteamDB, Stardew Valley still holds the second spot right after Portal 2, though the gap between the games is minimal. The difference is attributed to Steam250 and SteamDB using different methods for calculating Steam ratings.