Xbox Game Pass Is Losing One of the Best Games of All-Time at the End of August

August 18, 2026, 12:22pm

What is widely considered one of the best video games in history will be departing from Xbox Game Pass at the end of August 2026. As of today, Xbox has announced its lineup of new titles that will be joining Game Pass in the days and weeks ahead. This slate is a pretty solid one, as it includes games such as Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, Blood Dungeon, and BlazBlue Entropy Effect X. And while most Game Pass subscribers are surely focused on these incoming titles, it’s the impending loss of one high-profile game that is perhaps the most newsworthy.

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Set to take effect on August 31st, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be getting removed from Xbox Game Pass. Released originally in 2015, The Witcher 3 is widely considered one of the greatest RPGs in history and helped catapult The Witcher as a franchise into the spotlight. Despite now being over 11 years old, The Witcher 3 remains incredibly popular and is without question one of the best titles within the Game Pass library. It will be making its way off of the Xbox subscription service alongside other games that include Another Crab’s Treasure, NBA 2K26, and Neon Abyss in late August/early September.

This Game Pass Departure Is Happening at a Bad Time

What makes the timing of this removal of The Witcher 3 on Xbox Game Pass even worse is that developer CD Projekt Red is still supporting the game. Unveiled earlier this year, a new expansion for The Witcher 3 titled Songs of the Past will be released in 2027 and will expand upon the game’s story and world. This DLC is expected to help set the stage for The Witcher 4, which is currently in development at CD Projekt Red and will be launching at some point in the years ahead.

With this in mind, if you’re someone who intended to play The Witcher 3 via Game Pass before the arrival of Songs of the Past, you’re now running out of time. Although there is the possibility that The Witcher 3 could come back to Xbox Game Pass in the future, no such confirmation has been made by those at CD Projekt or Xbox.

If there is one silver lining to this removal, it would be that The Witcher 3 happens to go on sale quite often. Historically, the game routinely gets discounted to the $10 range across both Xbox consoles and PC, with its various expansion also getting deeply discounted. Currently, such a promotion for the game isn’t transpiring, but it’s worth keeping an eye on the Xbox Store in the weeks ahead, as this sale could end up happening again relatively soon.