PlayStation has officially cancelled Fairgames, the PS5 and PC live service shooter it had in production at Haven Studio.

The news comes from Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, though it's been sourced from an internal email distributed to PlayStation employees, and a company spokesperson has commented on the story.

That spokesperson told the outlet that Haven Studio will remain open following the cancellation, and it won't suffer any job losses. The developer, originally headed by Jade Raymond of Assassin's Creed fame — who left about a year and a half ago — will now become a support team within PlayStation Studios.

In the email to PlayStation employees, it's said a recent test of Fairgames didn't deliver the results the company wanted.

It said: "While the test demonstrated strong operational excellence, live ops readiness and community engagement, player feedback and retention results were mixed and fell short of the goals we had set. Combined with challenging market conditions in the PVP shooter genre, we have made the difficult decision to cease development on the game."

Announced more than three years ago, Fairgames was one of the headline announcements from the infamous PlayStation Showcase that properly pushed Sony's live service efforts — it was also where Concord and Helldivers 2 debuted.

Since then, absolutely nothing official from the game has been made public except for studio departures.

The game has reportedly done poorly during pre-launch and private tests, which has now been confirmed in the email to employees this week. There were rumours Fairgames would be brought back with a new name, Break In, around the summer season of games conferences earlier this year, but it never materialised.

Now, Fairgames will never release.

It's yet another failure from PlayStation's first-party efforts during the PS5 era, which has seen many cancellations to the likes of The Last of Us Online, Payback from Bungie, live service titles from Sony Bend and Bluepoint Games, and Twisted Metal. You might as well throw Concord in there too, because while it did actually release, it was taken offline permanently after just two weeks.

Let's hope the PS6 generation doesn't follow in these footsteps.

[source bloomberg.com]