Valve willing to work with Microsoft to bring Xbox Game Pass to Steam

Valve CEO Gabe Newell has said he was willing to work with Microsoft to bring the Xbox Game Pass for PC to the company’s digital distribution platform Steam.

In an interview to gaming news and review website PC Gamer, Newell said Valve had no plans to launch a Game Pass competitor, as he didn’t think “it’s something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time”.

Newell, however, said he was open to Microsoft putting the Game Pass on his platform because “for their customers it’s clearly a popular option, and we’d be more than happy to work with them to get that on Steam”.

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The Valve CEO said he had held discussions with Microsoft but the talks hadn’t led anywhere, so far.

“We’ve talked to people there quite a bit about that topic,” said Newell. “If your customers want it, then you should figure out how to make it happen. That’s where we’re at.”

Steam is the dominant platform on PC for distribution of games, so popular that third-party companies like Bethesda have announced plans to drop their storefronts and move all their games to Steam.

Electronic Art’s subscription service EA Play also offers access to its basic plan on Steam, though the Pro subscription is exclusive to its service Origin.

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Steam also takes a 30 percent share of revenue on titles sold through its platform but that drops it to 20 percent if sales exceed $50 million.

Microsoft offers a lot of its popular titles such as Gears of War 5 and Halo Infinite on Steam but hasn’t shown the inclination to bring the Game Pass to Steam.

Microsoft takes only a 12 percent share of revenue on titles hosted on its store and has said it is willing to let Steam be part of its Windows 11 app store.