PlayStation has officially canceled Fairgames (styled Fairgame$), the live-service PvP heist shooter from Haven Studios. After years of silence and multiple reworks, a recent playtest with thousands of players delivered mixed feedback and weak retention. Sony executives cited that failure plus the brutal competition in the PVP shooter market and pulled the plug.
Haven, founded by Jade Raymond and bought by Sony in 2022, will not see layoffs. The studio is simply being turned into a support team for other PlayStation projects. Classic damage control after another expensive live-service bet failed to stick.
What the Game Actually Was
- Competitive heist shooter where teams break into high-security spots, steal cargo from the ultra-rich, and fight other player crews to extract.
- Pitch was pure "rob the rich and rebalance the scales" messaging. Modern Robin Hood fantasy aimed at players who supposedly care about wealth inequality.
- Announced in 2023 with a glossy CGI trailer full of face-painted operatives, including a prominent brown woman with space buns and hoop earrings as the face of the project.
- Gameplay leaned extraction-style: infiltrate, loot, compete, get out. No big single-player campaign.
The trailer and marketing leaned hard into the diversity checklist. Players noticed. Playtests apparently did not convert that into retention. Sony spent years and resources chasing the live-service goldmine and keeps hitting the same wall. Concord already showed how this ends. Fairgames joins the pile of cancelled projects from the same push.
Cutting losses on yet another girlboss-led heist game with a clear political flavor makes sense from a business view. Players have repeatedly shown they do not want lectures mixed with their shooters. Haven can now help other studios instead of burning more cash on a concept that never found an audience.