The power of a simple joke!
Yesterday, we highlighted an April Fools’ joke about something called “Xbox Game Pass Flex” and how we thought it might convince a few people, but there’s another joke that had many people questioning whether it was true or not!
Going through the daily Google Trends is something that’s part of our job here at Pure Xbox — we always want to keep on top of which Xbox-related searches are getting the most attention — and it took us by surprise yesterday when all of the top rising queries for Xbox involved searches like “Xbox buys Steam”, “did Xbox buy Steam”, “did Xbox purchase Steam” and “Xbox buying Steam”.
“A ‘Breakout’ indicates an increase in search interest of 5,000% or more. It may be due to new queries that have had few or no prior searches.”
Looking into it a bit further, we think we’ve found what caused it. Over on TikTok, a creator known as jacobweeby shared their own April Fools’ joke which proclaimed that “Microsoft has purchased Steam” and that Xbox and Steam had entered into a “long lasting partnership”, racking up over 50,000 likes and 13,000 shares in the process.
The comments section reveals that many people were convinced by this at first before realising it was an April Fools’ joke, and we assume others took to Google to try and find evidence of whether it was definitely fake or potentially true!
So, just in case you were in any doubt, we’re here to put it to bed – Xbox has not bought Steam, and this was simply intended as a lighthearted April Fools’ joke by the TikTok creator.
Of course, we’re still hopeful that Steam will play a major role in the next Xbox console (Project Helix), as it’s believed that the system will be able to play Steam games out of the box. No confirmation on that yet, but it seems very likely!
Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.
