The Horizon multiplayer co-op game is struggling, so badly that according to a new 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 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, visually at least, looked like it was Sony’s attempt to have a game closer in style and tone 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 games-as-a-service money-printing machine is paved with the corpses of cancelled or sunset games and closed studios including Bluepoint, the God of War live-service game it was working on, Naughty Dog’s Last Of Us multiplayer game, Destiny 2 (which still hurts to utter aloud) and, of course, Concord.
Hopefully Horizon Hunters Gathering won’t end up being just another body to toss on the pile.