Sony wants another forever game. The kind that eats your evenings, sells you cosmetics, and keeps the PlayStation Store humming.
Problem:Fairgame$, the live-service shooter Sony announced almost three years ago, apparently still isn’t sure it’s actually fun.
That’s the word fromInsider Gaming, which reports the project is still inpre-alphaand, behind the scenes, the big mission right now is simply “finding the fun.” That phrase shows up in plenty of game developments. But when you’re building a title designed to run for years, “we’re still looking for the fun” lands more like a smoke alarm than a status update.
A Sony-owned studio, a long runway, and a rough round of playtests
Fairgame$is being made byHaven Studios, founded by industry veteranJade Raymondand acquired bySony Interactive Entertainment. It’s slated forPS5 and PC.
According to Insider Gaming, recent test sessions produced enough negative feedback that some testers reportedly just stopped playing. The complaints weren’t “needs polish.” They were “this feels incomplete” and “this isn’t engaging.” Pre-alpha builds are supposed to be incomplete. “Boring” is the scarier word.
An extraction shooter with futuristic heists, and respawns
On paper, Fairgame$ sits in theextraction shooterfamily: drop into a map, sneak around, loot, crack open chests, and get out before somebody turns you into a highlight clip.
Insider Gaming describes a “heist” flavor to it, more smash-and-grab than military sim. The notable twist:respawns. A lot of extraction games lean hard on per-match permadeath to crank tension. Respawns could make Fairgame$ more welcoming… or it could sand down the very edge that makes the genre addictive.
And that’s the whole live-service problem in miniature. Seasons and events and battle passes don’t rescue a weak core loop. If the minute-to-minute play doesn’t hit, the content calendar is just a fancy way to schedule disappointment.
Think The Division meets Call of Duty, plus wall-running
Insider Gaming says it saw gameplay and came away with comparisons toThe DivisionandCall of Duty. Translation for normal humans: third-person-ish tactical vibes on one side, snappy action-shooter instincts on the other, with an emphasis on readable fights and satisfying gunplay.
There’s also reportedly some mobility tech, includingwall-running, which is either a great way to juice movement or a great way to make every fight feel like you’re getting jumped by a caffeinated gymnast.
Visually, Insider Gaming claims the look has shifted too: the bold, stylized color palette from the original trailer has apparently been toned down toward something morerealistic. That happens. Teasers sell a mood; production builds have to ship a game where silhouettes pop, distances read cleanly, and your eyeballs don’t melt after a three-hour session.
But there’s a trap here. If you start looking and feeling too much like the big dogs, you’d better have a hook that’s more compelling than “we also have guns.”
Playtesters reportedly hammered movement, NPCs, and class design
The ugliest detail in the report is the playtest feedback pipeline itself. Insider Gaming describes a playtestDiscordflooded with negative comments, especially aboutmovement,NPCs, andclass systems.
That trio is the skeleton of this kind of game.
If movement feels off, floaty, inconsistent, sticky, everything downstream gets worse. Aim feels wrong. Fights feel messy. Learning the game feels like doing chores.
NPCs matter more than people admit in extraction shooters. They’re the noise, the pressure, the “third party” that gives away your position, the reason you can’t just camp a corner forever. Bad NPC design turns the map into dead air or cheap annoyance.
And classes? That’s your meta, your teamwork, your identity. If roles aren’t clear or don’t create those “oh man, we pulled it off” moments, players don’t bond with the game, and live-service games live and die on bonding.
Insider Gaming also says some testers quit because the build feltincompleteandboring. Again: incomplete is normal. Boring is a design emergency.
Fairgame$ is also a referendum on Sony’s live-service push
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Fairgame$ is part of Sony’s broader push intolive-service, a pivot away from being “the single-player prestige box” and toward being a company that also owns your weekly routine.
And live-service isn’t a one-time launch. It’s operations: balance patches, anti-cheat, moderation, community management, constant updates, and the ability to feed the machine without burning out the studio.
The competition isn’t just new releases. It’s the games people already treat like a daily habit. You’re not fighting “other shooters.” You’re fighting Fortnite’s gravity, Call of Duty’s muscle memory, and whatever else already owns players’ limited free time.
So when a project is reportedly still “trying to find the fun,” that’s not harmless dev-speak. That’s the moment where teams either simplify, rebuild, or rethink the whole rhythm of matches, because you can’t patch your way into a soul later.
Haven’s real job now: iterate fast without becoming a copycat
ForHaven Studios, the assignment is brutal and pretty simple: take the playtest punches and turn them into changes that actually improve feel, controls, feedback, combat readability, class clarity, without sanding off whatever makes Fairgame$ its own thing.
Insider Gaming’s reporting paints a game that’s still far from final form. That’s also when the most expensive decisions get made. You can tweak maps and tune weapons late. Fixing a core loop that doesn’t hook people is a whole different beast.
Sony doesn’t just need Fairgame$ to launch. It needs it to earn a spot in players’ routines. That’s the bar. And right now, if the reporting is accurate, Fairgame$ is still trying to clear the first step: getting people to want to hit “Play” again.
