Horizon Hunters Gathering Is Dropping Its Live-Service Plans

It looks like Horizon Hunters Gathering is going through tough times. Some pretty important changes are happening right now. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Guerrilla Games is rebooting the upcoming Horizon multiplayer game following negative feedback from players who took part in its private playtests. The biggest change is that the live-service elements are apparently being removed entirely. Instead, Guerrilla is now working toward a much smaller, more traditional co-op experience with a story mode. That is a pretty significant change from what was originally planned.

For those who do not know, this was the live-service game that was based around the Horizon Zero Dawn games.

When Horizon Hunters Gathering was announced, Guerrilla described it as a three-player cooperative action game built around challenging and replayable hunts. Players would choose different Hunters, customize their builds, upgrade their gear, and take on modes. The game was also planned to have a small story campaign and a social hub between missions.

Now, however, the project has reportedly been rebooted since June, following a few rounds of private playtesting. According to the report, the feedback was not good enough for Sony to continue with the original live-service vision, leading Guerrilla to rethink what the game should be.

Horizon Hunters Gathering Is Not Cancelled… Yet

Despite the reboot, Horizon Hunters Gathering has not been cancelled. That said, its future apparently is not completely secure either. Guerrilla has been given until December to show Sony executives enough progress on the new version of the game and convince them that the project is worth continuing. So there is still a chance that Hunters Gathering could eventually see the light of day, but it may end up looking very different from the game Guerrilla originally announced.

Honestly, moving away from the live-service model is probably a good thing for the project. The Horizon universe already has a strong foundation for co-op, and a focused game that you can simply play through with friends is a much different proposition from another game designed around keeping players coming back for years with a ton of microtransactions.

Of course, we will have to wait and see if Guerrilla can make the new version work.

What About Horizon 3?

Unfortunately for fans waiting for the next main Horizon game, there is also some less exciting news. The same report claims that the next single-player Horizon game is still “far, far away,” with only a small team currently working on it. A lot of Guerrilla’s resources have been used for Hunters Gathering, so the reboot could have even more consequences for the studio’s plans going forward.

A lot of players compare this to the other recent live-service games that were canceled, such as The Last of Us one, and people start to wonder if companies should maybe stop trying to turn good games into live-services that will not work out either way. Players think that they should just focus more of their time and money on the next main game. The fact that they allocate so many resources to these live-service versions that never see the daylight is also a big reason why these same companies take so many years to release the next big game.

As for this one, we will have to see if removing the live-service can turn the game around or not, but at least the studio appears to be listening to the feedback, so this is already a good thing.

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