Xbox Game Pass Loses Firewatch, Atlas Fallen, Aliens: Fireteam Elite and MENACE Today

Four games drop out of Xbox Game Pass at the end of today, 15 August: Firewatch, Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand, Aliens: Fireteam Elite and MENACE. The removals hit Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC, so there is no tier or platform where these four quietly survive the rotation.

Which games are leaving Xbox Game Pass in August

This is the first of the month's two removal waves, and it is a small one by recent standards. Here is what goes, and which subscription levels each one was sitting on:

• Firewatch — Ultimate, Premium, Essential and PC Game Pass. Campo Santo's 2016 first-person mystery, set in a Wyoming fire lookout tower, and the only one of the four available on the cheapest tier.
• Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand — Ultimate, Premium and PC Game Pass. Deck13's sand-surfing action RPG, in the rebuilt version that replaced the 2023 original outright in August 2024.
• Aliens: Fireteam Elite — Ultimate, Premium and PC Game Pass. The three-player co-op shooter from Cold Iron Studios, published by Focus Entertainment in 2021.
• MENACE — the Game Preview build of Overhype Studios' turn-based sci-fi tactics game, published by Hooded Horse. It entered early access on 5 February 2026, which makes barely six months on the service.

MENACE leaving is the odd one here. Game Preview titles usually stay put while they are still being built out, and this one is from the Battle Brothers team, so it has an audience that will notice.

What happens to your save files

Nothing is deleted. Cloud saves and local saves both stay where they are, and achievements you have already unlocked remain on your profile. What you lose is the licence to launch the game: from tomorrow it will show a purchase prompt instead of an install button.

If you buy the game later — next week or next year — your progress picks up exactly where it stopped. That is worth knowing before you rush a playthrough tonight.

The discount runs out with the games

Members get at least 20% off any Game Pass title they buy while it is still in the catalogue, and that discount disappears at the same moment the games do. If you want to keep one of these four, buying before the cut-off is meaningfully cheaper than buying after it.

Firewatch is the obvious candidate. It runs about four hours end to end, which means finishing it tonight is genuinely realistic rather than a stretch — it is one of the few departures where "just play it now" is better advice than "buy it on discount". Aliens: Fireteam Elite and Atlas Fallen are both long enough that the discount is the sensible route.

How to check the leaving list yourself

The catalogue's own Leaving Soon row inside the Xbox app and the Game Pass section of the console dashboard is the authoritative list, and it updates ahead of any coverage. Games occasionally get pulled from that row and stay on the service, so a title appearing there is a warning rather than a guarantee.

Removals are also almost always contract expiries rather than statements about a game. Firewatch has done this before: it left in December 2022, came back in August 2023, and is now on its way out a second time. A return is entirely possible.

What is arriving instead

Four titles are already confirmed for September, including Minecraft Dungeons 2 and Dune: Awakening, with the rest of that wave still to be announced. Nearer term, the Gears of War: E-Day open beta running on Xbox Series X|S and PC closes on 17 August, so there is a hard deadline on that one too.

If you are filling gaps elsewhere, Duskfade launched this month at $29.99 across PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2 and PC, and our round-up of the most anticipated games of 2026 and their release dates covers what is still to come. Playing on the move instead? The Android games with full gamepad support all work with the Xbox pad you already own, and if your controller is on its last legs, GameStop's trade-in offer now pays the same credit for broken pads as working ones.