Raccoon Logic head Alex Hutchinson publicly criticized the Xbox Game Pass subscription model in a conversation with Gamer Social Club.The developer acknowledged that despite some short-term advantages of the service, it could harm the entire video game industry, especially independent studios, in the long run.

Hutchinson's statement may be surprising - just a month ago, his studio just put the game "Revenge of Wild Planet" on Game Pass.According to it, Microsoft's subscription service does bring immediate benefits, such as the cost of game storage or higher exposure, but there are serious drawbacks behind this:

"We see content value degraded and players are even less willing to pay for games. In the long run, this may lead to fewer new works and more studios going bankrupt."

In addition, he expressed disappointment at the sales of the Wild Planet's additional content: Despite the huge number of Game Pass subscribers, players are less interested in game expansion packages than expected.

Hutchinson believes that the way to avoid the bad situation above is to restrict the game from joining the subscription service in the first year of its release, and compare it to the film and television industry's model of "first theater release, then logging into the video on demand platform".

Despite criticizing the subscription model, he still emphasized that Microsoft is an "excellent business partner" and that the cost of entering the Game Pass is "decent enough" - but he also pointed out that this is "a situation many years ago."

Hutchinson further expanded the scope of discussion on social platform X, bluntly saying that "Nintendo is only concerned with maintaining the true value of the game", and wrote:

"Everyone except Nintendo is competing to zero in on the value of content and will end up suffering."

At present, the industry is in a fierce debate over the impact of the subscription model on the gaming market.Skeptics include not only independent developers, but also analysts and former industry giant executives - Jim Ryan, former CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, once called the Xbox Game Pass a "destructive solution."