As reported by PushSquare, Colin Moriarty shared this information in the latest episode of his Sacred Symbols podcast. He heard from people who were invited to Fairgame$’ pre-alpha on PSN under the codename Project Hearts.
Based on the original trailer, we got the impression that it would be a co-op heist game, similar to Payday 2 and Monaco. Colin was told that it felt more like a battle royale crossed with an extraction shooter, and they more closely felt the inspirations it received from Fortnite and The Division.
Of course, the Payday franchise had players agree to play career criminals, and terrorizing civilians and holding them hostage were inherently part of the gameplay. Looking back, the trailer presented this premise where players would be infiltrating cartoonishly gigantic vaults like you were stealing from Uncle Scrooge or Richie Rich, or perhaps a James Bond villain.
Attacking these vaults means facing layers of security measures, which includes both NPCs and mechanical threats. On top of that, you’re in a race to pull off these heists while other teams do the same, so things can get gnarly when these teams meet up. So it’s possible Fairgame$ was designed around not playing the bad guys completely.
Moriarty was told that Fairgame$ was clunky and just doesn’t feel good to play. He was not told about the state of the game’s progress. Given that this is coming out a week after Jade Raymond, who founded Fairgame$’ developer Haven Studios, just left Haven, one can make connections and assume that there are connections between the announcement and these rumors.
This also comes a week after Marathon was torn up over its art plagiarism, and roughly half a year after Concord’s failed release. The vibe around Sony’s live-service games is just generally poor, with Helldivers 2 standing as the only good news. Microsoft now has the Call of Duty franchise to stand as its game competition with mindshare against Fortnite, but even Fallout 76 and Halo Infinite have turned out much better vs. Sony’s projects.
We won’t get ahead of Sony’s announcements and decision making, but clearly Concord has taught them to err on the side of caution. To some extent, they may have also reconsidered their earlier decisions, especially if they were made with guidance from Bungie, who has also seen their reputation as the masters of live service be immolated.
We hope for the best for Haven Studios, and we’ll see if things will work out for Fairgame$
