Report: Live-service removed from Horizon Hunters Gathering following negative player feedback

Guerrilla Games is overhauling Horizon Hunters Gathering by removing its live-service structure and scaling the project back into a more conventional multiplayer game with a story mode. The shift follows negative player feedback from closed playtests held in North America and Europe earlier this year, suggesting the original direction wasn’t landing with the audience Sony wanted to reach.

The redesign reportedly began in June, and the team has been told to hit the next milestone by December and demonstrate meaningful progress to executives. People working on the game are expected to be reassigned if the project doesn’t stay on track, with those staff potentially moving to another project that will also be reviewed at the end of the year. The exact roles affected haven’t been disclosed, but the move implies a major reset rather than a light tuning pass.

This matters because Guerrilla had shifted most of its staff onto Hunters Gathering after Horizon Forbidden West in 2022, leaving only a smaller team on the next single-player Horizon sequel, which is still years away. In practical terms, that means the studio’s production capacity has been tied up in a project that is now being redefined, and the ripple effects could influence staffing, schedules, and the broader Horizon roadmap.

The change also fits a wider pattern for PlayStation’s live-service push, which has run into repeated setbacks. Concord was pulled from sale after two weeks, several other live-service projects were cancelled, and Sony has continued to talk up the need to revitalise the strategy. For developers,...