Xbox Game Pass subs can now give five friends a free trial

Xbox Game Pass
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Xbox Game Pass has added a friend referral offer that lets Ultimate or PC subscribers give up to five friends a two-week trial of PC Game Pass. 

"You can find Friend Referral invitations on the Game Pass Home screen, just click the 'Give PC Game Pass' button to share," senior marketing manager Rasmus Mortensen said in a blog post. There's also a new "Invite your friends" page on the Xbox site. 

The biggest caveat here is that the 14-day free trial only covers the PC Game Pass library, which includes most of the Game Pass library, but not all of it. And as the invite page reiterates, only people who've never tried Game Pass before can claim one of your five free trials. 

"You can invite up to five friends. Copy the available trial code/link, paste it in your favorite email or text app, and send it to a friend," the explainer reads. If you generate a trial code to share with a friend but they don't redeem it within 30 days for some reason, that trial "will become available to share again after 30 days." Naturally, the 14-day countdown doesn't start until a trial is redeemed. 

Xbox is quick to note that "this also means that starting today, you can share PC Game Pass with more friends and jump right into Redfall on day one." But, uh, well, I'll let our Redfall review do the talking here: "Single-player is hampered by a squad-based open-world shooter structure, multiplayer held back by odd decisions, and decent gunplay is marred by uninspiring mission structures." 

The Xbox home screen just got an update for alpha users that adds a new quick access menu. 

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with 12DOVE since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.