According to a change to the Xbox Insiders Alpha, Microsoft is removing the need for gamers to have an Xbox Live Gold subscription if they are playing free-to-play online games, such as Fortnite. This means that if you exclusively play free-to-play online games, then you won’t need to spend any money at all.
Microsoft actually announced that they were planning on removing the Xbox Live Gold requirement for free-to-play titles back in January, but now it seems that they are actively working to get it done. Right now, like we said, it is only available to Xbox Insiders Alpha, but this means that they are testing it out and hopefully non-Insiders will be able to look forward to these changes soon.
These changes are part of the overall changes Microsoft is making to the Xbox platform. The company recently revealed that they are going to rebrand Xbox Live to Xbox network to distinguish it from the Xbox Live Gold membership.