A Bloomberg report says Fairgames, a PvP heist shooter announced by Haven Studios and Sony in 2023, has been cancelled. In something of a surprising twist, a PlayStation rep told the site there will be no layoffs as a result of the cancellation, as Haven will "shift its focus to collaborating with other development teams across PlayStation Studios, while also exploring new creative opportunities."
While it was announced three years ago, work on Fairgames appears to have started even further back, in 2021. Just a couple months after her high-profile split with Google Stadia, Assassin's Creed co-creator Jade Raymond announced the formation of Haven Studios, which was "working on an unannounced new IP for PlayStation."
In 2022, right around the time former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan was talking about launching 12 live service games by 2025, Sony acquired the studio outright; a year after that, Fairplay was revealed to the world.
But things have not gone smoothly since then. Helldivers 2 was a massive hit, but seven of those planned games were cancelled before release. Of the remaining games, one was Marathon, which endures but has not lived up to expectations, and another was Concord, one of the most famously disastrous game launches in years, which was taken offline less than two weeks after it launched, never to return. A live-service spinoff of the Horizon series, Hunters Gathering, was also reportedly rebooted after negative feedback from playtests.
The Concord catastrophe in particular seemed to shake Sony, which began reversing its live service strategy just a few months later.
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