Xbox Live Gold members will no longer receive two free Xbox 360 games every month starting in October 2022. The company has started sending emails to subscribers to notify them about the change this morning, though the Games with Gold program isn’t going away.

“We have reached the limit of our ability to bring Xbox 360 games to the catalogue; however, Games with Gold will continue to include exciting Xbox One titles and exclusive savings each month. This will not impact any Xbox 360 games that you downloaded before October 2022,” the company explained in the email.

Xbox is sending out emails saying that Games with Gold will no longer include Xbox 360 titles.

The email is a bit confusing but it looks like all future Games with Gold offerings will only include XB1 titles going forward. pic.twitter.com/W8mlEsVKmn

— Brad Sams (@bdsams) July 5, 2022

What this means is that all the Xbox 360 titles that you claimed via the Games with Gold program until now will be yours to keep forever, even if you stop your subscription. In comparison, Xbox One games redeemed via Games with Gold still require an active subscription to be played.

Microsoft launched its Games with Gold program with Xbox 360 games back in June 2013, and Xbox One games were added a year later. Starting in November 2015, all Xbox 360 games offered via the program became backward compatible on Xbox One consoles.

With Microsoft ending its backward compatibility program for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles last year, the company just had a limited selection of Xbox 360 games to offer to Gold subscribers going forward. In the past 3 months, we’ve actually seen the company re-offer previous Gold titles to subscribers such as Torchlight, Super Meat Boy, or Hydro Thunder Hurricane.

Even though it’s not the end of the road for the Xbox Live Gold program yet, further changes are probably going to happen down the road. In recent years, the program had become far less valuable with Xbox Game Pass consistently getting better games, and Microsoft also dropped the Xbox Live Gold requirement for free-to-play Xbox games last year. Maybe Microsoft will get rid of Xbox Live Gold once Xbox Game Pass reaches a certain milestone, but for now, Gold benefits will continue to be included with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Tagged with Games with Gold, Gaming, Xbox, Xbox Live Gold