the enski said:This is a very strange case. Even if it's not published by Xbox Game Studios, the IP is owned by them now after Compulsion Games' acquisition.
Like Wasteland 3 and The Outer Worlds are published by different companies (Deep Silver, Private Division) and IPs are owned by Microsoft, but the games are still here and probably will be always available on Game Pass.
In my opinion, Microsoft should somehow buy back publishing rights in the past and secure themselves for any situations, like this one for example. And if they would have publishing rights, they could re-release We Happy Few on Xbox Series X|S and PC with all DLCs included already under Xbox Game Studios.
Like they did with Double Fine and Psychonauts 2 (I know that they did this 2 years before it was released). They acquired full publishing rights from Starbreeze Studios for $13.2 million.
I know that all those deals are not that easy and it doesn't work just like that, but I'm talking hypothetically.
Also, there is some strange situation with some „legacy” games of some acquired studios.
• Contrast (Compulsion Games) joined Game Pass in February 2021, more than 2 years after acquisition and it doesn't support Xbox achievements on PC and also it doesn't support Xbox Play Anywhere (separate release)
• RAD (Double Fine / BANDAI NAMCO) is still not available on Game Pass, but… it was available on PlayStation Now (October 2020 – June 2021)
• MASSIVE CHALICE (Double Fine) was given through Games with Gold, but never added to Game Pass.
• Broken Age (Double Fine) is like Contrast – joined Game Pass in December 2021, more than 2 years after acquisition and it doesn't support Xbox achievements on PC and also it doesn't support Xbox Play Anywhere (separate release)
• Hunted: The Demon's Forge (inXile / Bethesda Softworks) after finalizing ZeniMax acquisition and extending backwards compatibility library it wasn't added on the list of supported games
Perhaps Gearbox didn’t sell the publishing rights of this game to MS? So MS cannot put it like other first party games on GP kinda forever? Or simply the game’s got contracts on other platforms that prevents MS from acquiring it like PlayStation? Maybe MS would kindly buy back the publishing right of it after the game finishes whatever service it committed to, making it a return to GP.
The games you mentioned are kinda old, and their genres probably didn’t or failed to attract tons of players so the cost performance efficiency wasn’t good enough for MS to re-release them.
Recent GP games show an increasing trend of supporting Play Anywhere, but with a cost of losing PC achievement list stack. However, still some games don’t support Play Anywhere, as they should be supposed to be, this is probably because of the technical limits from individual devs.
Obviously a single week isn’t long enough to complete such a 40-50 hours completion game, if anyone likes it I recommend to buying its full DLCs bundle from sales. It costs a bunch of money like around $15 to $20 instead you can play other newer games on GP, increasing your GP efficiency. To make your wanted games appear in sales more frequently, I believe the trick is to simply go to MS store on your Xbox, search for the games you want and then add to Wishlists and wait.