PlayStation cancels Fairgames, says no jobs will be lost
Fairgame$ has been cancelled after a long incubation period, but thankfully none of the folks working on the game are losing their jobs
Initially announced in 2023 from Haven Studios, online heist shooter Fairgame$ has been cancelled per a report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.
Haven Studios' upcoming game will not see the light of day and the folks working at the studio have not been laid off. Despite a recent large scale playtest back in September, After Schreier's report went up, PlayStation said in a statement "the studio will shift its focus to collaborating with other development teams across PlayStation Studios, while also exploring new creative opportunities."
This is another in a series of cancelled or fully reworked Live-Service titles from PlayStation. Most have also been followed up with studio closures. Thankfully, Sony seems happy with the way the Haven handled Fairgame$'s development and was more concerned with carving out a corner of the market.
Two executives, Sean Decker, Head of Live Service, and John Doyle, VP and Head of Production at PlayStation said that "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. Combined with challenging market conditions in the PVP shooter genre, we have made the difficult decision to cease development on the game.”
Right now, we know that Haven Studios in Montreal is safe from layoffs and hopefully they won't see any in the near (or far) future. There is plenty to speculate about with a studio that PlayStation seems happy with in regards to their Live-Service development pipeline (Destiny 1 remake, anyone?) but for now, we'll have to wait and see what their next project will be.
