Sony Group Corp’s PlayStation has cancelled Fairgames, the long-incubating online shooting game that was in development at Haven Studios, its subsidiary in Montreal.
There will be no job cuts as a result of the cancellation, a spokesperson for PlayStation said. "The studio will shift its focus to collaborating with other development teams across PlayStation Studios, while also exploring new creative opportunities,” the company said in a statement.
Fairgames, announced in 2023, was part of an ongoing initiative from the Japanese gaming group to release so-called "live-service” games, ones that continue to generate sales from in-game purchases long after they’re released. The game had been reworked several times over the last three years and was planned for a re-reveal with a new title.
A recent test of the game with thousands of players did not deliver the results PlayStation expected, the company said in an email to employees on Nov 10.
"While the test demonstrated strong operational excellence, live ops readiness and community engagement, player feedback and retention results were mixed and fell short of the goals we had set,” wrote executives Sean Decker and John Doyle in the note, which was reviewed by Bloomberg News.
"Combined with challenging market conditions in the PVP shooter genre, we have made the difficult decision to cease development on the game.”
PlayStation has cancelled several games and closed multiple studios in recent years, including Bluepoint and Dark Outlaw Games. Its live-service initiative, for which the company had said it would release more than a dozen games, has mostly been unsuccessful. – Bloomberg
