Valve CEO Gabe Newell is open to the idea of making Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service available on Steam. Speaking with PC Gamer, Newell said that Valve isn’t interested in creating its own game subscription service alternative, and it had “nothing philosophical against having Xbox Game Pass on Steam.

“I don’t think it’s something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time,” Newell said. “But 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”.

Microsoft bringing Xbox Game Pass to Steam would certainly make a lot of PC gamers happy. The current version of PC Game Pass leverages Microsoft’s Xbox app for Windows 10 and Windows 11, which still lacks many of the features that made Steam popular, including broad mod support.

Steam is the biggest digital game distribution platform on the market by far, and having Xbox Game Pass on Steam could really push the service to the next level. The move wouldn’t be unprecedented, as a company like EA already offers its EA Play subscription service on Steam in addition to its own Origin PC game launcher.

However, Microsoft may well have other priorities. The software giant recently detailed its Open App Stores principles for its Microsoft Store on PC and Xbox consoles, which followed some big changes the company made to make its store more attractive for app and game developers last year. Bringing Xbox Game Pass to Steam may well go against these ambitious efforts.

Tagged with Steam, Xbox Game Pass