// KOTAKU — GAMING
Report: Sony Rebooting Live-Service Horizon After Bad Player Tests
The Horizon multiplayer co-op game is struggling, so bad that according to a report in Bloomberg, its development is getting rebooted. Bloomberg reports that after a poor internal playtest showing in June, the developers at Guerrilla Games have worked to retool Hunters, stripping out live-service elements and adding in a story mode to create a smaller-scoped game. While Bloomberg says Hunters Gathering isn’t yet cancelled, the team has until the end of the year to show they can turn the game around.
Horizon Hunters Gathering was announced earlier this year and was billed as a “tactical co-op action game” that looked like it was Sony’s attempt to have a game in style and tone closer to Fortnite. Though it’s been four years since Horizon Forbidden West released, players eager for the next single-player entry in the Horizon franchise would have to wait until Hunters was complete as that game was reportedly Guerrilla’s main focus.
Sony has been trying to crack the multiplayer nut for a while with mixed results. Helldivers 2 was a great success and Marathon seems to be on its way up too. But Sony’s road to the great GAAS money printing machine is paved with the corpses of cancelled or sunset games and closed studios including Bluepoint Studios, the God of War live-service game it was working on, The Last Of Us multiplayer game, Destiny 2 (which still hurts to utter aloud) and, of course, Concord.
Hopefully Horizon Hunters Gathering won’t be another body to toss on the pile.
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