This is a glimpse at our future under Techno-Feudalism, by the way. Five companies own all the entertainment and charge you extortionate rates to rent it. Please enjoy these last few years of Steam allowing indie games to be published with $20.00 or lower prices - once Gabe Newell goes away, inide devs are going to get “Spotified” out of existence by whatever venture capitalist buys up Steam.
This is also more directly a result of Microsoft squeezing every department for more cash to keep the AI bubble inflated. There’s no doubt that the overarching success model for GamePass was based on the potential for market monopolisation, but it’s the demand for every more cash to go all in on AI that has called time early on that plan.
AI crazy preponed this particular price increase but it was inevitable one way or another. Their Xbox Series consoles turned out to be massive flops. On PC people still prefer using Steam over any other platform. They were just stacking Ls.