Sony has canceled Fairgames, the heist game it announced in 2023, according to Bloomberg.
Bloomberg reported that the decision followed a test of the game, after which "player feedback and retention results were mixed and fell short of the goals we had set." Retention, meaning how many players keep coming back, is the number live-service games live or die on. Those are games built to be played for months or years, funded by ongoing updates and purchases rather than a single sale.
The cancellation won't result in job cuts, Bloomberg reports. Developer Haven Studios will instead support other PlayStation studios.
Fairgames was once part of Sony's big planned push into live-service games, and that push has since shrunk. Sony canceled some planned titles, including ones in the God of War and The Last of Us franchises, and it shut down Concord shortly after its failed launch.
Against that record, the way Fairgames ended stands out. Concord was pulled after it reached players. Fairgames was stopped at the test stage, with no launch to retract and, for now, no layoffs. That is a quieter exit, and arguably the one a publisher wants when the numbers disappoint: the earlier a live-service game fails, the less public damage it does.
What Haven works on next, and which live-service projects Sony still has in development, are the open questions.