PlayStation Reportedly Reboots Horizon Multiplayer Spinoff Following Negative Feedback

Sony has reportedly rebooted PlayStation live-service game Horizon Hunters Gathering after negative feedback from playtests.

Horizon Hunters Gathering is a multiplayer, cartoony spinoff from Guerrilla’s mainline, single-player Horizon series, which is known for its photorealistic visuals. Upon its announcement in February, Horizon Hunters Gathering was compared to Capcom’s Monster Hunter series, although many questioned whether it would find an audience.

Closed playtests followed earlier this year, with a launch across PlayStation 5 and PC expected to follow. However, according to Bloomberg, Sony has ordered a reboot of the game amid negative feedback from the playtests. Apparently, Guerrilla has been working to reboot the game since June, and plans to strip out the live-service parts of the game to make it “a traditional cooperative multiplayer game with a story mode and a far smaller scope.”

It sounds like there is a great deal of pressure on this reboot, too. Bloomberg said staff were told this week that Guerrilla has until December to impress PlayStation bosses with the game’s next milestone. It’s not canceled, but it sounds like it could be. Some Horizon Hunters Gathering staff are being moved over to another Guerrilla project with a milestone due at the end of this year, Bloomberg added.

Apparently a “tiny team” is working on the next Horizon single-player game, which we’ll call Horizon 3 but will undoubtedly carry a new subtitle, but it’s still years away.

When Horizon Hunters Gathering was announced, game director Arjan Bak said that in the game you'd fight deadly machines in tactical three-player co-op action and adapt your Hunter for intense missions.

"Combat is tactical, reactive, and deeply skill-based, building on the tactical precision of the Horizon games while embracing the dynamics of team play," Bak said at the time. "The foundation of Horizon Hunters Gathering centers around challenging and replayable hunts."

Bak confirmed two game modes: Machine Incursion, which was described as "a high-intensity mission" where waves of machines pour out from underground gateways, led by a "formidable boss"; and Cauldron Descent, a longer, multi-stage trial in which "ever-changing rooms push Hunters to their limits, from brutal machine encounters to hidden doors that promise power and reward for teams prepared to open them." Both modes were available in the closed playtests.

There's a roster of Hunters to play as, each with distinct melee or ranged playstyles and weapons. Bak said there was also a roguelite perk system to craft the build you want. Story wise, there was a narrative campaign "which will introduce new mysteries, characters, and threats, but we’re keeping it under wraps for now," Bak said back in February. "What we can say is that Hunters Gathering is fully canon and its story doesn’t stop at launch!"

The social hub is the name of the game: Hunters Gathering. It was "a vibrant social hub where players can connect, prepare, and celebrate victories together. Here, you can customize your Hunters, visit vendors, upgrade gear, and team up for your next adventure."

It is unclear how much of this, if any, remains in the rebooted version of the game.

Horizon Hunters Gathering is yet more trouble for Sony’s embattled live service ambition, which now appears to be in full retreat. While Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2 was a breakout hit, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks, Sony’s other live service games were either canceled or suffered disastrous launches.

Indeed, Sony’s Concord is one of the biggest video game disasters in PlayStation history, lasting just a couple of weeks before it was brought offline amid eye-wateringly low player numbers. Sony later decided to kill the game entirely and shut its developer.

The Concord flop came after Sony had already canceled Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game. Last year, Sony reportedly canceled two unannounced live service games, one a God of War title in development at Bluepoint, the other in the works at Days Gone developer Bend.

Sony announced plans in February 2022 to launch more than 10 live service games by March 2026, later saying the push would bring games of different genres to different audiences. It spent big on studio buyouts as part of the drive, bringing in Destiny and Marathon developer Bungie, Jade Raymond's Haven Studios, and the now shuttered Firewalk Studios.

But in 2023, Sony president Hiroki Totoki said the company was reviewing the 12 live service PlayStation games it had in the works, and committed to launching only six of them by the end of financial year 2025, meaning by the end of March 2026. At the time, Totoki said Sony was still working on when the other six live service games would come out, adding: "It's not that we stick to certain titles, but for the gamers quality should be the most important.”

In April, the director of The Last of Us multiplayer spinoff spoke out on the “devastating” impact of its cancellation, which he only found out about 24 hours before Sony made it public. Vinit Agarwal also explained Sony's ill-fated push into live service.

“What happened was, during COVID, the game industry saw a huge growth because everyone was at home,” Agarwal said. “So in 2020, money was flooding into the game industry because people were playing a lot more games all of a sudden because they're at home. What else did they have to do?

“Not just that, online games specifically saw a huge boost because people wanted to play with their friends. They couldn't see their friends, so they had to play online with their friends. So online games got a huge boon. So Sony decided to put a lot of money into online gaming like everyone else was. And so that was part of why The Last of Us Multiplayer got funding, and we got off the ground and we made a lot of progress, and the game was doing really, really well internally. We developed it almost to 80% completion. It was very very close to done.

“But then all the forces that pushed the game industry in 2020 were the reasons it started declining in 2022, 2023. So as people returned to the office, suddenly people didn't have as much time to play games. You know, that spending reduced. The economy also went down. And so all that money that flooded into the game industry was not going to be able to sustain. Because money was getting pulled out, they had to also kind of collapse the spending they'd spent. They overspent basically. They were overzealous.”

Horizon Hunters Gathering isn't the only multiplayer game set in the Horizon universe. Bizarrely, NCSoft and Sony are working on Horizon Steel Frontiers, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game designed for mobile devices, but also playable on PC. NCSoft is said to be working closely with Guerrilla to craft the world, but this is very much an NCSoft-developed game.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.