Microsoft Rewards continues to be an amazing way to earn free credit for things like Xbox Game Pass and even Ticketmaster codes, but over the past few months, we've started to see a decline in the number of points you can earn.
This has continued over the past few hours - as the daily Quest that allows you to earn 50 points for an achievement in Xbox Game Pass title has now been slashed to just 5 points per-day. In total, that's a huge loss in potential points.
We've been waiting a little bit to see if it was a mistake, but so far we've seen nothing from Microsoft to suggest that's the case. Ultimately, we're looking at a loss of well over 1000 possible points per-month using this method.
As disappointing as this might be, there are still so many great ways to earn points for Microsoft Rewards on Xbox and beyond right now, and we've highlighted them all as part of our exhaustive Microsoft Rewards guide here at Pure Xbox.
Did you notice this? What are your thoughts about it? Tell us in the comments section below.
Comments 41
This will go eventually which is a great shame as i use it often for DLC but doesnt mean i will go out and buy them. Next will be the 2500 points for 10 weeks in a row that will be slashed. The ones at 5 points i dont chase as it isnt always worth it.
in my country there is no even microsoft rewards 💀
Meanwhile me, in a region where Rewards don't exist: 🍿
This does kind of stink as I donate all my points to a cause. I like to feel that me playing games makes a difference. 😂
Wow Microsoft/Xbox really have changed in the amount of reward points recently. I get it from their perspective but it’s not great for us. There is barely any incentive to go out of our way to get reward points these days besides the Rewards Weekly Set, daily Bing streak and completing the sets like this weeks Limbo 11 deaths for 250 points. I’ll still do those things as it’s more of a daily routine thing I do now as I first switch on the Xbox but you got to wonder what else are they going to slash in the future?
Microsoft Rewards was way too generous, even though I rarely hunt points on purpose. It makes me laugh to get stars for getting jpegs as rewards on my Switch.
Earning the 50 pts a day got in the way of playing none Game Pass Games. For the amount of time to earn the points it almost wasn't worth it, now it definitly isn't. Better ways of farming points than this achievement anyway. Looking forward to concentrating on Assassin's Creed Valhalla now that i purchased the other day.
@Gloki_junior ner the pwf will go next it makes sense ,they moving stuff that makes big points quick and leaving stuff that takes weeks and even adding in the case of the 12 week bing daily search
Pwf brings in 250 a day with bonus points ( link social ,7 friends,sub to gp ) that's 7500 a month in a 30 day month where as the bonus 2500 is every 10 weeks ,keeps ppl doing stuff for longer for less points
Pwf will b cut sooon or even taken away
Even with the achievement cut I should still hit 24000 a month ...untill more cuts kick in of course
@CHAOSbutler117 didn't know you people existed. Hats off to you man.
I'm not surprised they're cracking down. Microsoft Rewards was a shockingly generous program.
It stinks, but I understand. As others have said, the program has been pretty generous.
I don't purposefully hunt for point. I think I am sitting at like 7000 points right now. I just get them as they come and whenever I get to 10000, I will turn it in for $10 Credit.
After I used my 250K points to put toward a Series X ages ago, I had a real lull in my desire to collect points, even though they were still generous at the time.
I'm not sure what it was, maybe I had achieved my goal, maybe I had less time because the pandemic was more or less over or maybe it was something else. I carried on doing it for a couple months after I got the Series X but then I just stopped.
It just became too much of a chore across both Xbox and mobile, especially mobile because my hands would hurt due to smartphones being non-ergonomic. I think the time sink into all the game pass rewards took its toll on me as well, it just wasn't fun and became a chore.
Fast forward to a couple months ago, all the rewards had dropped in both their actual reward but more critically the time requirement had dropped massively too.
I started doing them again, just on the Xbox though across the Bing, Edge, Rewards and Game Pass apps. Overall, the only regular points I am missing out on with this low effort approach is 60/day from the mobile searches.
And this time, it really is just taking a few minutes a day, I do it while I'm having my breakfast and coffee.
I'm also not bothering for the achievement reward unless it happens naturally and I'm definitely avoiding any of the more arduous weekly game pass rewards, stuff like kill 80 zombies in state of decay 2 or whatever. I can stretch to something like die 12 times in Limbo but anything that takes more than 5-10 minutes will just be ignored.
And well? I actually really like this approach. It's low effort and low commitment. I actually like the fact that there are less rewards to earn because I don't get the FOMO from not doing the high effort/commitment ones.
That's just how I feel about it, I totally understand the argument that there should still be better rewards and I should just ignore them but that's just not how my brain works. So for me at least, less reward points available is actually much better for me psychologically.
They've really tightened the rules over the past year. It would be a good idea for an article comparing what the Rewards were like before vs now.
But looking at the glass half full, if there was one Reward I don't mind them cutting it's this one. It used to annoy me when I got more than one achievement per day as I had a feeling that I was wasting 50 points. A version of FOMO I suppose. Now I basically won't care.
I used to make sure I did my dailies and tried for the weekly goals, but it stopped being worth it a while back. Now I just play my games and I'll take a look at the rewards once a month or so to get the points but I hardly pay attention to them anymore.
I'm pretty sure MS's goal is to slowly make them worse so that when they eventually kill it nobody will notice.
@kantaroo That happened to me LOL. I started to play Ni No Kuri II because it's expected to leave Game Pass in March, but I was not enjoying the sequel in spite of loving the first one. I was getting an achievement per chapter and when a random achievement unlocked I was like, "Oh no!" Thus, for me if they cut the rewards for achievements is fine and I'll play whatever I want whenever I want. Xbox is still the best value in the console market. I don't hunt achievement for G, either.
People forget that MS get something out of it.
But it’s been a steady thing this year for price rises/worse value across MS.
Clearly pushing to improve revenue, as they aren’t hitting targets.
Not sure if anyone has noticed as well but the xbox quests on the game pass app has now been moved to the xbox app so if you used the xbox game pass app to turn in quests
You now have to use the xbox app instead
The program has been in decline now for a bit. I know people defended them when the last nerf came in saying that “you just have to do different things to earn the same points”. I think we can just put that nonsense to bed.
As long as I can still get enough per year for GamePass I’ll keep doing it but it was nice to have extra to do things like Halo battlepass, Starfield early launch, Ubisoft+, etc.
This sucks. I haven’t had to pay for game pass in a long while because of the rewards, sooner or later this isn’t going be worth it.
this reminds of of the screen shot button they added to the controller but now they will delete the screen shots after 90 days. if i upload to one drive i have to view them on my pc. i can't even find a way to view the one drive pics from the console.
so nitpicky and petty phil.
Right now I'm with just above 161k points. I've been loving rewards ever since I bought my Xbox 2 years ago, since the missions take only a few minutes a day. It's sad that they are slowly killing the program, but I'm grateful for all the games I've been able to get through it. I hope they don't decide to end it once and for all, though.
I never bothered with gamepass achievements but microsoft are definitely winding the points down.
I used to be able to pay for gamepass with my points and it only took a couple of minutes a day.
Now, I barely pick up half the points needed and seem to be spending a lot longer doing it.
Probably not worth chasing microsoft points anymore.
Corpos gonna corpo. If they lose a single penny they can’t give themselves million dollar bonuses and raises.
Oh wow this definitely isn't a welcome change. Loved grabbing a quick 50 points a day on my lunch break everyday. Still plenty of points per month to cover gamepass and a $5 GC but not a fan of this trend.
IMO they killed rewards when it went from 500 points for a $5 credit to 5000 points. With about a 5x increase in time it took to earn the points for the $5 card.
They seem bent on doing everything to Xbox except making it a better value.
I cant really moan ive had a series X and a series S + 42 games all paid for via rewards
They have been slowly but steadily nerfing rewards for over a year. Never one thing large enough to cause a big stir, but all together it adds up to a lot. Anyone paying attention KNOWS this.
It's not just how many points you can get but, they've made it harder to get some rewards (E.g. Game Pass games only) and increased some of the rewards costs.
It's still an OK service and I'll continue to use it, but it isn't what it once was. Still I got several hundreds of pounds worth of stuff from them over the years. I'm happy for that at least. Always felt a little too good to be true.
In these high inflationary times it is always nice to get a few things for free…. It’s getting to be a bit more of a grind though … got $25 waiting for Black Friday!
Daily Achievement from 50 to 5, Play a Game from 5 to 3, Play Microsoft Jewel from 50 to 30, the removal of other extra Points from the Xbox App, the removal of Month Punchcards, the removal of the shopping game, the removal of the Points from fitness videos - it feels like they're trying to phase it out by the end of 2024. These are a crazy amount of changes to do within a few months back to back.
It sucks that they are clearly winding this program down. I'll be taking advantage as long as it's offered but clearly they are seeing metrics that point to them not needing that carrot infront of players for them to engage with gamepass. Rack them points up while you can
Over the last 6 months the vast majority of high points earners have either been vastly reduced or removed entirely. It seems they are expecting people to be willing to spend more without relying on the rewards as much going forward as they expand what is available on Gamepass.
Dedicated Rewards guy, but it's their show, so I guess they can do what they want. I have picked up the Xbox over the PS and Nintendo quite often with the thought of popping that Daily, so that won't factor in any more. May be kind of freeing actually.
@Kaloudz Yes. This was inevitable. I have been using the rewards points to extend my GPU membership for years now. MS is not going to allow me or others to easily maintain a never-ending subscription.
My 3-year conversion sub should have ended in June. It ends March 27, 2026 as of this moment. I'm sitting on 35k+ points that could be traded for another 3 months to toss on the pile. The 1-month GPU auto renewal stretches the points even further, so I switched to that option.
I know Im supposed to care but I don't. It seemed overly generous and from the comments I guess I wasn't far off. The occasional free Starbucks card was nice but never something I strived for.
They are probably phasing it out form abuse or just feel it no longer adds value to the system. On a couple other forums the teeth-gnashing was epic. "I'm going to quit Xbox now.." or "Xbox just lost a customer..". Gurl, bye. Seriously. 😂
Every year I have more MS Rewards points than I am allowed to claim. Does not bug me one bit.
@theduckofdeath you can have a ever ending sub but you'll just need to pay for it.
I'm on EE in the UK so I've get GPU bundled in my contract 😎
Its a real shame that rewards are not quite as rewarding as they used to be, as I know many of you actively pursue rewards and it helps pay for GP.
I think perhaps that following the 70 billion spend, head corp are not prepared to let the xbox division be as generous as they have been and are insisting on starting to see some returns, hence some of the changes and stories of late. I guess its to be expected - they are not a charity.
It doesn't affect me, I've never chased rewards and no doubt have some I've never claimed. Whilst everyone likes free money, I won't dance to the tune of a corp to earn some. I play the games I want to play the way I want to play them and I use the search engines I want to. Fair play to those who have used and enjoyed the system to help finance their gaming though, and especially to the poster who donates their reward points to good causes, that's a fantastic thing to do if you can afford to.
Between the nerfs and how janky the app on the Xbox is I don't even bother anymore.
@rustyduck There is a OneDrive app on Xbox. I use it to view photos.
@count_midge not on my series consoles, also i get an error every time i try to upload my screen shots to onedrive. i cant even save them to external hdd or sdd. i get errors or failed message. its a big mess for me.
This is a shame about the cutbacks, I'm only really doing the Bing rewards now via my phone as they seem the only viable time to points ratio left.
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