Here are the games joining and leaving PC Game Pass in August

pcgamer.com:

It looks like Death Stranding is coming to PC Game Pass.

The addition hasn't been announced officially, but the PC Game Pass account(opens in new tab) on Twitter changed its avatar to an image of a Death Stranding vista and posted a tweet that says «sometimes we just like a good landscape picture.»Oh you guys.

There's some doubt in the tweet's replies as to whether the screenshot was from Death Stranding or another game, but then someone found the rock pictured in the PC Game Pass avatar and posted a screenshot(opens in new tab) of Norman Reedus pissing on it. So, yeah, I think Death Stranding is coming to PC Game Pass at some point.

A related but superfluous thought: Last year, Microsoft renamed the PC version of Game Pass, which used to be called «Xbox Game Pass for PC.» The old name was bad, but now I'm wondering if this scenario was a consideration, too. Game Pass has always offered certain games on PC only, but Death Stranding is a special case: Microsoft can't offer it on the Xbox version of Game Pass because the console version was published by Sony exclusively for PlayStation consoles. (The PC version was published by 505 Games.)

Neither Sony nor Microsoft would benefit from causing confusion by putting the words «Death Stranding» next to «Xbox»—they'd both have to field questions about a non-existent Xbox version of Death Stranding. Hence the PC Game Pass name change, maybe?

I'm speculating. The console wars have gotten awfully complicated, though, eh? It used to be simple: Mario vs Sonic, Halo vs Killzone. Now the PC has become a weird central territory where the divisions between console factions are blurred. We've benefitted as PC gamers, but I'm a little nostalgic for an old-fashioned motion controller arms