Live-service games are a genre of games that gamers have long since grown tired of, as they often involve cash grabs and unfinished products. Overall, games-as-a-service have been less and less welcome, and many have been doomed to fail. And it looks like another might be joining the doomed pile, as reported by Bloomberg, Sony has reportedly made Guerilla Games make a last-minute pivot and reboot Horizon Hunters Gathering due to negative player feedback from the betas. The reboot reportedly has the dev team abandoning the live-service aspect and turning it into a regular co-op game.
Horizon Hunters Gathering was first showcased as a live-service co-op action game involving animated heroes fighting mechanical beasts in the Horizon universe. When the game was initially announced and shown off, many wrote the game off as another doomed-to-fail live-service game from Sony, similar to Concord. Horizon Hunters Gathering had three different betas earlier in the year, and the feedback has been nothing but negative. But instead of canceling the game, Sony has decided to have Guerrilla Games pivot and reboot it into regular co-op game with a story and a much smaller scope. It’s also being reported that the majority of the dev team has been moved to other projects while a small team works on the next single-player game in the series. Bloomberg also reported that Sony said the team will need to impress executives with its next milestone in December.
It’s currently unknown what will happen to the game if they fail to impress, but given Sony’s recent moves, it’s safe to assume the game may be canceled, similar to the live-service games The Last of Us and God of War. All in all, it isn’t too surprising that Sony is trying to pivot, as games-as-a-service have increasingly been rejected, especially those by Sony. It’s currently unknown what the future may hold for Horizon Hunters Gathering as the devs work to reboot the game by December, but the writing is on the wall, and only time will tell. Maybe Sony will finally learn its lesson.