Xbox Game Pass users on the Premium tier can start playing Keeper as part of their subscriptions starting today, October 2. The month’s first catalog update comes from Double Fine productions, a newly former Microsoft subsidiary that was unilaterally spun off over the summer and now finds itself supporting Xbox Game Pass from a much less stable situation.
Keeper‘s original October 2025 release spanned everything from PC and consoles to handhelds and Xbox Game Pass. However, as has been the case since late summer 2024, Double Fine’s wordless adventure about a lighthouse that grows legs and befriends a pelican skipper the lower tiers of Microsoft’s subscription service at launch. It likewise followed the usual pattern of trickling down to the Premium-tier library just ahead of its first anniversary.
Keeper Enters Game Pass Premium Lineup as Double Fine Exits Xbox
Keeper‘s routine journey to the Xbox Game Pass Premium library now sits beside a much less familiar corporate situation that the award-winning developer behind Brutal Legend and Broken Age finds itself in. Within weeks of Microsoft cutting it lose, Double Fine was forced to undergo major layoffs, losing roughly one-third of its 70-something workforce in late July 2026. The situation was particularly tragic given that the San Francisco-based game maker can hardly be said to have fallen short of expectations after joining Xbox.
Double Fine Has Been Delivering Exactly What Microsoft Wanted
Psychonauts 2, Keeper, and a Huge Back Catalog of Quirky Titles Helping Game Pass Offer Something for Everyone
On the contrary, the studio spent its seven-year stint at Microsoft doing what it had long been known for: delivering highly creative and decidedly quirky games that, while broadly suitable for all ages, tend to attract much smaller audiences on average because their experimental nature and eccentricity make them inherently niche. In addition to landing one unequivocal commercial and critical hit in Psychonauts 2, which reportedly sold over 1.7 million copies in its first eight months, Double Fine spent its Microsoft era merely doing its thing, contributing to both the variety and cadence of Game Pass catalog updates in the process.
Herein lies the tragedy: that is exactly what Microsoft wanted it to do all along. “Our main mission is going to support Game Pass,” then-head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty said of the 2019 acquisition at the time. And support Game Pass Double Fine did, to the point that Keeper is still reaching new subscribers through the service even as the developer itself no longer enjoys the stability that came with being part of a multi-trillion-dollar conglomerate.
Double Fine starting its second indie era with massive workforce cuts suggests that the studio might currently need Game Pass licensing fees more than Xbox needs its catalog contributions. That arrangement, however, may not last forever: Double Fine’s Crazy Taxi-inspired next game that’s due to debut in October is skipping Xbox at launch, thus ending a seven-year publishing streak.
- Released
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October 17, 2025
- ESRB
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Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence, Animated Blood
- Developer(s)
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Double Fine Productions
- Publisher(s)
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Double Fine Productions
