Microsoft is ruining their rewards program

[LITTLE LEVEL]

If you don't know Microsoft has a rewards program that gives you points you can use to redeem gift cards for different places and buy subscriptions like game pass. Now a few months ago you would get about 16,000 rewards points a month (equal to about $17-$18) and about 18,000-20,000 rewards points a month if you had game pass (equal to a little over $20.) Then with Ultimate game pass being only 12,000 rewards points a month you could get game pass free and then have plenty extra points you could save for something big. People were getting Xbox's, Headsets, Controllers, games, and much more for 100% free.

So then the changes started rolling in. First they took any devices that were not manufactured by xbox of the store. Meaning you could only get Xbox made Headsets, controllers etc. So that means xbox wasn't losing as much money. People were bummed but you could still get tons of rewards points. Then Xbox took away about 1,000 rewards points of offers off the app meaning you would get less points a month. They slowly continued doing this until they removed the option to do the daily searches on Edge. Now you could only do them on the Bing app and on the mobile bing app. But things got worse. When doing searches most people would search just one letter repeated many times so they could get their points fast. So Microsoft added a system were if you search more than 3 searches in a short period of time and/or search nonsensical search results your searches would be put on hold and you couldn't get points from searching until the timer was up. Meaning what usually took about about 2 minutes now took a whole day because the system is tough and if it even seems a little like you are just abusing the system then it temporarily disables points made from searches.

Now I understand you have to make money and people getting tons of free items from you and it costing you money sometimes can cause a toll on a company. But Microsoft made more money than they let on off of rewards. Not only could Microsoft sell the data they collect, featuring games on the rewards apps gets them money because games pay to be on there. I heard people on forums and a lot of people said rewards was the only way they could afford games and new headsets, controllers, chargers, and more. It really does suck but this is were we are. Maybe one day they will revert back to rewards points but as of now I guess we will have to deal with it.