Five games walk out of the Xbox Game Pass catalog on August 31, and one of them is The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt – Remastered Edition. If you’ve been putting off that replay, the clock just became a real thing.
Microsoft laid out the departures in an official announcement on Xbox Wire. Every title on the list leaves the same day. After that, you either buy in or you’re out.
This is the part of the subscription deal nobody puts in the ads. Games arrive, games vanish, and the catalog you signed up for isn’t the catalog you’ll have in three months.
The five games leaving
Another Crab’s Treasure, the cartoonish underwater soulslike RPG, is on the way out. So is I Am Your Beast, the FPS.
Neon Abyss, the highly stylized run-and-gun roguelike, goes with them. One Lonely Outpost, which joined Game Pass in 2025, rounds out the group.
And then there’s the CD Projekt RED entry, which is the one people will notice.
Why The Witcher 3 stings
The Witcher 3 only arrived on Game Pass in February of this year. A few months on the service, then gone. That’s a short run for a game of its size.
There’s a plausible reason. The game is getting brand-new content 11 years after release, and the studio may want to push sales ahead of the DLC’s arrival. Pulling it from a subscription service right before new content drops isn’t a coincidence you have to squint at.
The DLC everyone’s speculating about
It’s called Songs of the Past. It allegedly takes place in Toussaint, the setting of the Blood and Wind DLC, and it follows Geralt of Rivia on a new adventure.
Plenty of fans think it’ll bridge the third core game and the upcoming The Witcher 4. That’s speculation, not confirmation, but it’s the theory with the most traction.
One more removal, a week later
The August 31 group isn’t the whole story. NBA 2K26 leaves on September 6, per the same announcement.
Removals like these usually come down to contracts between studios and the publisher, plus the practical need to clear room for whatever’s next. It’s business, not punishment.
What’s arriving to fill the gaps
August’s second wave of additions includes Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy and the Game Preview for Vapor World: Over the Mind. The service has had a good year for RPGs, and one of 2026’s best games joined recently, giving subscribers a look at a serious contender for this year’s gaming awards.
So the catalog isn’t shrinking so much as churning. That’s the model working as designed, whether or not it feels that way when your save file gets stranded.
You’ve got until August 31. Play them free, or grab them at a discount and keep going after the servers stop caring whether you subscribed.
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