Horizon 3 benched: Guerrilla scrambles to fix multiplayer after disastrous playtests
Back in 2017, Horizon Zero Dawn made Aloy a PlayStation icon. Eight years later, her next solo adventure is shoved to the back burner—sacrificed for a multiplayer project that’s falling apart.
At Guerrilla Games, priorities have flipped. According to Bloomberg, nearly the entire studio is now grinding away on Horizon Hunters Gathering, a co-op spin-off whose playtests went so badly that Sony ordered a full reboot. With a stacked PS5 AAA lineup coming this fall, Horizon 3 is left to a tiny team and, per journalist Jason Schreier, is still a very, very long way off.
Image credit: Guerrilla
A skeleton crew for Horizon 3, the full squad on a multiplayer mess
The way Guerrilla Games is splitting its resources is enough to make any fan scratch their head. Bloomberg reports that the “majority” of the Dutch studio’s devs are now focused on Horizon Hunters Gathering, the multiplayer spin-off announced last February. Meanwhile, Horizon 3—the solo sequel millions are waiting for—is stuck with a skeleton crew, still in the planning phase. The third chapter is likely years away from release.
It’s a wild paradox. Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West both sold millions, making the franchise one of PlayStation’s biggest cash cows. Yet the studio’s resources are tied up in a multiplayer project that bombed in playtests. Private test sessions in May got such brutal feedback that Sony demanded a total overhaul in June. This is a far cry from the winning formula.
Hunters Gathering: December deadline, and it’s not looking good
The shakeup at Guerrilla isn’t just a cosmetic tweak. Bloomberg says Horizon Hunters Gathering must ditch its live-service ambitions and pivot to a more classic co-op experience, with a story mode and a smaller scope. Jason Schreier summed it up on Twitter: “New plan: smaller scope, more traditional co-op multiplayer, live-service is out.”
Sony’s drawn a hard line: Guerrilla’s teams have until the end of December to impress management with a revamped version of the game. If they don’t deliver, many devs on Hunters Gathering will be reassigned to another, unnamed project. It’s a scenario that echoes other PlayStation live-service flops: the outright cancellation of The Last of Us Online, the axed God of War multiplayer spin-off, and of course, the spectacular crash of Concord, which launched and was pulled from sale in just two weeks.
The list of abandoned or troubled multiplayer projects at Sony is getting long:
- Concord: shut down two weeks after launch in 2024
- The Last of Us Online: canceled after years of development
- The live-service God of War spin-off: quietly buried
- Horizon Hunters Gathering: in full reboot after disastrous playtests
2027, 2028… or never? The endless wait for Horizon 3
There were five years between Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) and Horizon Forbidden West (2022). Four years have already passed since the sequel, and Horizon 3 isn’t even in active production. When Jason Schreier calls the project “very, very far off,” he means it: another six or seven years of waiting isn’t out of the question. Some observers think the game won’t arrive until the PlayStation 6 launches—and even that console is facing unprecedented production woes.
If PlayStation 6 drops in 2027 or 2028, Horizon 3 could end up as a launch or early-window title. But even that optimistic scenario depends on Guerrilla massively shifting resources back to the solo project in the coming months—which hinges entirely on December’s verdict for Hunters Gathering. A GamesRadar journalist even speculates the third game might never get a physical release, hinting at a future where digital-only is the new normal.
PlayStation built its empire on narrative-driven solo adventures. As a former division head put it: “Single-player narrative games are here to stay. That’s how we built this company. That’s what keeps it alive.” The real question: how many more live-service crashes will it take before that philosophy is reflected in resource allocation—and Aloy finally gets the spotlight she deserves?
