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A listing for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream briefly appeared on Xbox Game Pass, but what looked like an erroneous app was actually a rudimentary shooting gallery in disguise.
Titled XBET_Test_Product_4, the game appeared on Xbox Game Pass with an icon picturing a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Several Reddit (opens in new tab) users shared the listing, which was nestled among the usual roster of Game Pass titles.
Downloading the app opened a simple shooting mini-game that could be played on touchscreen devices. The game was untitled, although the words “DirectX first-person game sample” were in the top left corner, alongside a “Windows platform samples” watermark.
The game appears to have been added to Game Pass by mistake and has since been removed. You can check out gameplay footage, captured before it disappeared, below:
What was the Xbox Game Pass Ben & Jerry’s game?
Despite its icon, the game has no connection to Ben & Jerry’s and is actually a Microsoft-produced sample game used to introduce programmers to DirectX and other development tools. A tutorial on how to create the game – which is simply titled Direct3D game sample – can be found on the Microsoft site (opens in new tab), and you can even download the backend code from a dedicated page (opens in new tab).
The game itself is a simple first-person shooting gallery. It challenges you to fire balls at a series of floating targets while avoiding obstacles. In some levels, you’ll have to hit all targets within a time limit, while in others you’ll have to strike them in a certain order. Complete all six levels, and you’ll be awarded a final score.
The game was likely added to Game Pass as part of the platform’s backend development. It was possibly being used to test how games appear on the Xbox Game Pass dashboard, and almost certainly wasn’t meant to be visible to players.
It looks like there is, in fact, no Ben & Jerry’s game coming to Xbox Game Pass, with the picture of the ice cream simply used as a placeholder image. But it’s an apt one – showing a tub of Ben & Jerry’s “Half Baked” ice cream.
At the same time it popped up on Game Pass, the game also appeared on the Microsoft Store for $4.07 – around £3.61 / AU$6.13. It’s not clear whether it was actually possible to buy the game, although its reviews section was filled with tongue-in-cheek comments praising its brilliant gameplay.