PlayStation Cancels Fairgame$ on PS5 and PC After Mixed Project Espresso Playtest: What Comes Next for Montreal's Haven Studios?
The vault door has officially slammed shut on Sony's competitive heist ambitions before the alarm could even ring. Three and a half years after its high-profile reveal during the May 2023 PlayStation Showcase, Sony Interactive Entertainment has canceled Fairgame$ (also stylized as Fairgames), the multiplayer PvPvE shooter in development for PlayStation 5 and PC at Montreal-based subsidiary Haven Interactive Studios.
Following years of quiet internal reworks and radio silence, a large-scale autumn playtest ultimately sealed the fate of the new intellectual property.
Inside the "Project Espresso" Playtest Verdict and PlayStation Studios Memo
First reported by journalist Jason Schreier at Bloomberg and subsequently confirmed by the publisher, the cancellation was announced to staff on November 10 in an internal email co-authored by two Sony executives: Sean Decker, Head of Live Service, and John Doyle, Vice President and Head of Production at PlayStation Studios.
Back in September 2026, the shooter quietly surfaced on testing platform Player.gg under the codename Project Espresso (while recent trademark filings hinted at a potential rebrand to Break In). The closed test brought in thousands of players across PS5 and PC to evaluate pre-alpha footage captured on PS5 Pro, pitching a third-person squad extraction loop built around the tagline "Get in. Get out. Get paid."
"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."
Sean Decker and John Doyle, in an internal memo sent to PlayStation Studios employees
Although Haven Studios' backend infrastructure and live-operations tooling performed reliably under load, the core gameplay loop pitting rival heist crews against AI security forces failed to hold player interest over multiple sessions.
Zero Layoffs in Montreal: Haven Studios Pivots to PlayStation Studios Support
In a Canadian development landscape recently battered by studio closures, such as Bandai Namco's liquidation of Montreal neighbor Reflector Entertainment, Sony's decision comes with a rare silver lining for local developers. A Sony Interactive Entertainment spokesperson confirmed that no jobs will be cut at Haven Studios as a result of the cancellation.
In an official statement, PlayStation confirmed that "the studio will shift its focus to collaborating with other development teams across PlayStation Studios, while also exploring new creative opportunities." Rather than dismantling the team, Sony is keeping Haven's network engineers and cloud specialists intact to support other first-party projects while the studio pitches its next concept.
Founded in March 2021 by industry veteran Jade Raymond and acquired by Sony in July 2022 as PlayStation's first development studio in Quebec, Haven introduced Fairgame$ in May 2023 on the official PlayStation Blog alongside creative director Mathieu Leduc as a modern Robin Hood heist fantasy about robbing the ultra-rich. In May 2025, Raymond departed the company following early external test hurdles, handing studio co-leadership over to Marie-Eve Danis and Pierre-François Sapinski.
PlayStation's Shrinking Live-Service Lineup vs. the Helldivers 2 Exception
Scrapping Fairgame$ marks the latest casualty in the live-service push initiated under former PlayStation chief Jim Ryan, who once pledged to launch twelve multiplayer service titles by 2026. The move also arrives amid broader service consolidation at Sony, coming just hours after the company announced the shutdown of Cloud Streaming on the PlayStation Plus PC app.
| PlayStation Live-Service Project | Developer | Status (November 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Fairgame$ (Project Espresso) | Haven Studios (Montreal) | Canceled after playtest (0 layoffs, pivoted to support) |
| Concord | Firewalk Studios | Taken offline after 2 weeks; studio shut down (2024) |
| The Last of Us Online | Naughty Dog | Canceled late 2023 to focus on single-player games |
| Unannounced God of War Live-Service | Bluepoint Games | Canceled early 2025 |
| Unannounced Twisted Metal Project | Firesprite | Canceled early 2024 during pre-production |
| Helldivers 2 | Arrowhead Game Studios | Breakout hit on PS5 and PC (over 15 million copies sold) |
With Arrowhead Game Studios' cooperative hit Helldivers 2 standing as PlayStation's only breakout live-service triumph across PS5 and PC, Sony leadership is now pulling the plug during closed testing rather than risking another costly commercial misfire.
My Take
Watching from Quebec, where we have seen far too many Montreal studios shuttered overnight in recent months, the best news in this entire report comes down to two words: zero layoffs. Creatively, however, the writing was on the wall for Fairgame$ the moment its CGI reveal trailer aired back in May 2023. Built around a focus-tested neon rebel aesthetic and followed by more than three years without a single public gameplay showcase, the project was chasing a heist shooter trend that had already cooled off.
As our editor-in-chief Bastien "Orion" pointed out when we reviewed the memo tonight, Sony is still paying off the tab for the Jim Ryan era's spreadsheet-driven mandate of twelve live-service games. In today's brutal PvP shooter market, where a handful of entrenched giants lock down 80% of player screen time, launching another squad shooter with lukewarm retention numbers would have sent Haven Studios straight into a wall. By pulling the plug after the Project Espresso test while keeping the Montreal team's networking talent intact to back up PlayStation Studios, Sony avoids a second public disaster on the scale of Concord.
SEO consultant for over 20 years and digital entrepreneur, Charles "Grimtag" is the founder of Pro-Gamer.gg, Retrocharting.com, and Gamescharting.com. A competitive gamer, streamer, and retro game collector, he has worked in the video game industry for over 15 years, notably as a consultant for leading game price comparison platforms. Passionate about real-time performance data and gaming technology, he analyzes competitive esports, gaming hardware benchmarks, and creator workflows on Pro-Gamer.gg with an authentic player perspective.
