A handful of titles are set to leave Xbox Game Pass on November 16, 2025. Perhaps the biggest of these titles is none other than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (henceforth called Stalker 2 in this article). Stalker 2 will be pulled from Game Pass mere days before the game releases on November 20th for PlayStation 5.
Several Xbox Game Pass subscribers feel a weird sense of entitlement when it comes to Stalker 2 being pulled from the service. A post on Reddit by JBishie says that "it's a matter of principle" that Stalker 2 remain on Game Pass. They continue to say, "the game was incomplete at launch and is only now starting to resemble a finished product." They note that "the timing looks especially poor" as the 1.7 update nears as well as the PS5 release of the game.
At least one sensible person in the comments, VickyCriesALot, remarks that a year is about the usual amount of time for third-party titles to stay on Game Pass. Of course, that doesn't really matter when others, such as davepars77, says that "the game was released in a broken state" and that it should stay on Game Pass "because the game just got to (a) decent state in a that (sic) years time." Davepars77 then went on to use a slur, which really isn't helping their flawed point of view any, but I digress.
Still, they aren't completely wrong: Stalker 2 did launch in a very poor state not just on Xbox but also on PC. It really has taken about a year for the game to get to a state that would be considered acceptable to "good" for many players.
Other social media posts outside of Reddit note that it sets a "bad precedent" when "a game stays shorter in Game Pass than we had to wait for it to launch." Thinking that a game should be kept on Game Pass for at least as long as a game has been in development certainly is a take. It's a dumb take, but it's still a take. Still others suggest that Xbox should "stop funding unfinished early access games." In addition to Stalker 2, this person also notes that Payday 3 launched on Game Pass also as an "unfinished" game.
These complaints, absurd or not, come just a couple of weeks after Microsoft announced a price hike on Game Pass subscription prices. The price of Game Pass Ultimate went up to $29.99 a month. For those now paying these increased prices, it is somewhat reasonable to be a bit miffed when games are pulled from Game Pass.
Beyond Stalker 2, games such as Frostpunk and Spirittea are also leaving Game Pass. The full list of games being removed from Game Pass on November 16th can be found below:
- Football Manager 24
- Spirittea
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
- Blacksmith Master
- Frostpunk
