PlayStation has cancelled Fairgame$, an online shooter that was in development at Montreal’s Haven Studios.
Thankfully, a PlayStation spokesperson said that there will be no job cuts. Haven, a PlayStation subsidiary, will instead support other studios in the organization.
Fairgame$ was announced in 2023 as part of an ongoing initiative from PlayStation to release more live-service games, or titles that can be monetized for weeks or months after release. The developers reportedly reworked the game several times over the past three years and were planning on releasing it with a new title.
Reportedly, the game had a recent test, but didn’t deliver on the results that PlayStation expected, with executives writing in a note viewed by Bloomberg that “player feedback and retention results were mixed and fell short of the goals we had set.” The execs also pointed to the “challenging market conditions in the PVP shooter genre” as another reason for shuttering the game.
This comes at a horrible time for the gaming industry. Recently, Xbox divested from the Canadian game studio Compulsion Games, which thankfully managed to go independent and retain rights to its recent games. And even more recently, EA announced the shutdown of beloved Canadian studio BioWare.
While it’s disappointing to see that the company is cancelling the title, a quick search on YouTube shows a lot of people calling Fairgame$ a “risk,” and a “gamble,” though I’m not sure how much stock I’d put in YouTube titles.
Image credit: PlayStation
Source: Bloomberg
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