Last week it was revealed that Haven Games founder Jade Raymond had left the company before it had even published its first game, a live-service project titled Fairgames, for Sony. At the same time, a Bloomberg report stated that feedback from a closed-beta for the game had not been good, perhaps hinting at why Raymond had opted to leave. Now, a source who has played the game has shared some details.
On last week’s episode of Sacred Symbols, former IGN journalist turned podcast network owner Colin Moriarty reacted to the news of Raymond’s departure, explaining that he had spoken with someone who had played the game, but that he couldn’t say more as it was off the record. In this week’s episode, Colin said he had contacted the person again and asked to share what he was told. The source agreed, provided they were kept anonymous.
Colin reveals that the game was apparently distributed digitally across PSN under the name Project Hearts so that select people could playtest it. He does not know how many people were allowed into the test, speculating that it could be dozens or hundreds.
“It was described to me as something like a battle royale crossed with an extraction shooter, and it was described as, like, basically you’re dropped into this open city as a party of 3 or 4 players fighting against other parties in the same city of 3 or 4, and you’re trying to basically get to these arenas with vaults in them, where you rob the vault and get out of dodge.” Said Colin.
“The gameplay was described as a cross between Fortnite and The Division,” he continued.
The source told Colin that the game was “super clunky” and “it feels not good,” to play
A few years ago Sony announced plans to heavily focus on live-service, incubating multiple projects. So far, it hasn’t gone well. Helldivers 2 has been the only notable success, while Concord crashed and burned almost as soon as it was announced. Numerous other live-service projects were officially cancelled. Meanwhile, Marathon from Bungie is facing its own problems thanks to plagiarised artwork being used in the game.