Guerrilla Games is overhauling its upcoming live-service multiplayer game, Horizon Hunters Gathering, after early playtesters gave negative feedback. Reports indicate the team has been redeveloping the project since June and faces a December deadline to impress executives.
Horizon Hunters Gathering is a co-op action game that lets up to three players team up. Players are tasked with protecting protect a world under threat from deadly machines. As you hunt dangerous machines in the wilds, you’ll travel through a range of environments that bring missions and stories to life. Each location offers its own atmosphere, challenges, and opportunities for your team to explore and master together. The game even has a narrative campaign which will introduce new mysteries, characters, and threats.
Following early testing, the developers are stripping out the live-service elements to transform the project into a traditional cooperative multiplayer game with a story mode and a much tighter scope.
While PlayStation has not canceled the game yet, its live-service strategy is clearly faltering. Concord (2024) marked the company’s most catastrophic launch in the space. The $40 sci-fi hero shooter suffered abysmal player counts, prompting Sony to pull the game offline, issue full refunds just two weeks post-launch, and subsequently shut down Firewalk Studios.
Conversely, Helldivers 2 (2024) delivered a massive commercial triumph, selling over 12 million copies within months and standing as Sony’s fastest-selling release. Only time will reveal the ultimate fate of Horizon Hunters Gathering, but the final product will likely look entirely different from what the studio revealed earlier this year.