Microsoft may pull Call of Duty from Game Pass this year

Game Pass’s biggest selling point may be the thing Microsoft is now second-guessing. Xbox is reportedly considering taking Call of Duty out of the service this year, a move that would go straight at the subscription pitch many players bought into when Microsoft made day-one blockbusters part of the deal.

The report, which surfaced on April 12 and traced back to Windows Central’s Jez Corden, described the change as a possibility rather than a done deal. That distinction matters, but the rumor lands because Call of Duty has been one of Microsoft’s clearest proof points for Game Pass after the Activision Blizzard acquisition. If the franchise leaves day one, subscribers will immediately be asking a simple monthly-cost question: if Call of Duty is out, what exactly are they paying for?

The timing makes the potential shift even more striking. Xbox Wire’s April 7 Game Pass announcement still listed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for April 17, alongside Hades II and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Microsoft is still publicly selling the service around marquee releases, even as the reported rethink suggests the company may be weighing whether the economics of keeping Call of Duty inside Game Pass still work.

That tension goes back to the deal Microsoft announced on January 18, 2022. At the time, Microsoft said the $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, priced at $95.00 per share, would make Game Pass “one of the most compelling and diverse lineups of gaming content in the industry.” Microsoft also said Activision Blizzard brought nearly 400 million monthly active players across 190 countries, the kind of scale that made the acquisition look like a subscription engine as much as a content grab.

Industry watchers have long treated Call of Duty as the acid test for that strategy. In 2024, Christopher Dring of GamesIndustry.biz told the BBC that Call of Duty on Game Pass would be the biggest test for subscription models in gaming, and he said if it could not move subscribers, “probably nothing will.” Analyst estimates around Black Ops 6 sharpened that fear even further, with projections that Game Pass could gain up to 4 million subscribers while losing as many as 6 million full-game sales.

That is why this latest rumor matters beyond Xbox strategy chatter. If Microsoft really does pull Call of Duty from Game Pass, it would not just be a content change. It would be a rollback of the flagship promise that helped sell the Activision Blizzard deal in the first place, and a reminder that the subscription era still has to answer to the same old question of value.