If you were hoping to storm through Cauldron Descent with friends anytime soon, you might want to sit tight. According to a new Bloomberg report, PlayStation has reportedly ordered a major overhaul of Horizon Hunters Gathering, the multiplayer spinoff Guerrilla Games unveiled back in February. The reboot comes after the game reportedly struggled during closed playtesting, leaving executives unconvinced the current direction works.
The live-service model is getting scrapped
Guerrilla has reportedly been reworking the game since June, and the plan is to strip out its live-service backbone entirely. Instead of an ongoing, continually updated multiplayer experience, the game is being turned into a smaller, more traditional cooperative title built around a proper story mode.
That’s a major shift from what director Arjan Bak originally described: tactical three-player co-op hunts against giant machines, a roguelite perk system for customizing your build, and a persistent social hub for gearing up between missions. It’s unclear how much of that original vision survives the rework.
The game is not cancelled, but the pressure is real. Staff reportedly have until December to prove the new direction to executives, and many current team members are already being shifted to a separate Guerrilla project facing its own year end evaluation.
A familiar pattern for PlayStation
PlayStation’s live-service dream keeps collapsing, and Horizon is the latest casualty. The company pledged back in 2022 to release ten live-service titles, and its track record since then has been rocky at best.
The disastrous 2024 launch of Concord, pulled from sale just two weeks in, remains its most infamous misstep, and Sony has also shut down live-service projects at Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games, the latter closed entirely this year.
Helldivers 2 stands out as a genuine success story, and Bungie’s Marathon remains active despite its own struggles. Sony Interactive CEO Hideaki Nishino said in June interview that the company still intends to keep backing live-service games going forward. Whether Sony’s optimism holds up will likely depend on whether Guerrilla can actually pull of Horizon Hunters Gathering’s reboot.