Earlier today, PlayStation and Guerrilla revealed Horizon Hunters Gathering, the next entry in the popular post-apocalyptic franchise. But this spin-off is a multiplayer-focused online co-op action game that looks a lot like Monster Hunter meets Destiny. It will receive updates post-launch, and oh, wait, this is a live service game. Oh no, this was a bad time to announce Hunters Gathering.
I’m not sure a colorful, cartoonish online-only spin-off of the photorealistic solo single-player open world series Horizon would have been a smash hit with terminally online fans at any point. But right now, of all times, feels one of the worst possible moments to reveal Hunters Gathering to a world wide web primed to make a Kombucha Girl face at everything it’s doing. The last two years have been littered with the corpses of failed, cancelled, or still dying live service games. A lot of players are, understandably, tired of these things and unsure of whether they should even invest any time into caring, as so many seem to flop or shut down.
The hunt is on.
Step into the world of Horizon Hunters Gathering, a new co-op action game from Guerrilla coming to PS5 and PC: https://t.co/TNWH4oRX2Q pic.twitter.com/BCjSquv30R
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) February 5, 2026
It was just last month that Highguard launched and was then immediately trashed by a large portion of players. The live-service PvP shooter debuted at the Game Awards, launched with over 90k active players on Steam, and now, less than two weeks after launch, is struggling to reach 5,000 players and is nowhere to be seen on any of my social feeds. Before that, Concord, a previous attempt by Sony to make a live-service game, infamously crashed and burned in less than two weeks. Marathon, the next game from PlayStation-owned Bungie, has had a very rocky rollout ever since it confirmed it was an online-only live-service experience, making me nervous about its future even as sentiment online seems to be slowly rebounding to its favor.
There are so many more live-service games that seem to be struggling to exist in an era where most people are just playing Roblox, Fortnite, GTA Online, or DOTA 2 forever. As reported by TheGamer, many of the live service games launched in 2025 have lost most of their players, according to SteamDB. And while there are a few recent exceptions, like Arc Raiders and Marvel Rivals, it is really, really hard to break into the market and stay around. Even brief bright spots, like last year’s mini-breakout MOBA Supervine, eventually lose steam.
All of these attempts to carve out a sustainable multiplayer niche over the last two years have whittled down players’ patience. At this point, every live-service multiplayer thing gets dunked on relentlessly the moment it’s announced. Sure, some of that negativity is just assholes drafting off the “hate everything” digital ecosystems on TikTok and YouTube. But a lot of it is also just people tired of more games that ask a ton of the players without first earning it, only to eventually pay it back with a shutdown notice screenshot on social media.
This is the environment that Sony has announced Horizon Hunters Gathering into, and it shouldn’t shock anyone that a lot of the reactions to the game are people saying they have zero interest or actively calling it bad. Can you blame them? The last two years have shown that live service games are prone to failure, likely to collapse shortly after launch, and not worth checking out if you already play one or two of them, like Fortnite. Maybe that’s why they slipped it out in a PlayStation blog post instead of a proper State of Play showcase.
So, while I think Hunters Gathering looks neat and could be fun, I’m well aware that one day I’ll likely be writing a story about how it’s no longer getting updates and shutting off the in-game microtransaction shop. You’ll read that headline on X or Reddit, go “Oh right, that game…” and then just keep scrolling by. It’s hard to get too excited about a new game, even from a PlayStation studio, when that fate already feels sealed. Maybe especially from a PlayStation studio.
