PlayStation-owned Guerrilla Games is reportedly reworking its live-service game, Horizon Hunters Gathering, after negative playtest feedback earlier this year.
As per a report by Bloomberg, which spoke to people familiar with the company’s plans under anonymity, the PlayStation subsidiary is reportedly stripping out the live-service component altogether. The co-op game will reportedly be smaller in scope and turned into a more traditional multiplayer experience with a story mode.
According to Bloomberg’s sources, Guerrilla told staff in a meeting on Wednesday that they will have through December to impress executives with their next milestone. Many of the developers on Horizon Hunters Gathering will be reassigned to a different project that will also be evaluated at the end of 2026.
It’s unsure how many devs have been working on the game, nor what the different project is. In a follow up social media post, Bloomberg’s reporter Jason Schreier remarked that “almost all of Guerrilla Games has been working on Horizon Hunters Gathering for the last few years.”
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In 2024, Sony laid off 900 workers across PlayStation Studios to adapt to “evolving economic landscape,” which included Guerrilla. The job cuts reportedly affected about 40 people, which made for 10 percent of its total workforce, as per a Dutch newspaper AD report at the time.
PlayStation’s live-service efforts continue to stumble
Back in 2022, Sony told investors that it intended to make significant investments in live service games, hoping to have at least 10 such games online by 2026. A year later, however, months before announcing the cancellation of The Last of Us Online, the parent company delayed six games internally, while subsidiary Bungie laid off staff.
In the time since these events, sci-fi shooter Concord was shut down two weeks after its late August launch in 2024. Sony shuttered the team behind it, Firewalk Studios, as well as fellow subsidiary Neon Koi. Then, the company scrapped two unannounced live-service titles that were in development at first-party studios Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio, the latter of which reportedly led to an unknown number of contractors being laid off.
The fate of these studios has been rocky, to say the least. Sony shuttered Bluepoint Games back in February. The active development of Bungie’s Destiny 2 ended in June, and at least 292 employees at the studio were laid off.
It’s uncertain how the development of Horizon Hunters Gathering will continue from here. According to Bloomberg, a “tiny team” has been reportedly plotting out the next single-player entry in the Horizon series, but it remains years away from completion, according to the site’s sources.
Game Developer has contacted PlayStation for clarification on the matter.
About the Author
Contributing Editor, News, GameDeveloper.com
Diego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist and critic from Argentina. Video games helped him to learn English, so now he covers them for places like The New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, and more. He also runs Into the Spine, a site dedicated to fostering and supporting new writers, and co-hosted Turnabout Breakdown, a podcast about the Ace Attorney series. He’s most likely playing a rhythm game as you read this.