Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter is back with another episode of his Pachter Factor podcast, and he brings some interesting news: Fairgame$ might have been canceled.
While discussing Sony’s switch toward live service games, which he criticized because of wrong moves such as buying Bungie for a lot more than they were worth in his opinion, the analyst casually said that Jade Raymond had been let go and her game, titled Fairgame$, canceled.
Sony went, “Oh, we need some of that”, except that they bought Bungie to do it.” Bungie made Halo. They’re obviously very talented. They made Destiny. Destiny was good. It had ongoing in-game spend. But they paid 3.6 billion for it. They didn’t buy a mobile publisher like Scopely for 4.9 billion, which has 3 billion or 3.5 billion of revenue. Bungie has 300 million in revenue. They didn’t buy Niantic, which has 1.5 billion of revenue. They didn’t buy people who know how to make live service games. And then they turned all their console developers into live service developers, which resulted in Concord being shut down and the studio being shut down. Which resulted in Jade Raymond being let go and her game Fairgame$ cancelled.
Raymond’s departure from Haven Studio (which she founded in 2021) was officially announced in May, but we only learned back then that the game had been delayed from 2025 to 2026. Fairgame$ has been described as a ‘competitive heist experience’ in development for both PlayStation 5 and PC. Needless to say, if this cancellation were to be confirmed, it would be another major blow to Sony’s foray into the live service category, after the cancellation of Concord and The Last of Us Online.
In his podcast episode, Pachter directly attacked Sony, arguing that they have lost their way and ‘don’t know what they are doing’ anymore.
They are bad managers. They don’t know what they’re doing. They should do what they’re good at and they should buy what they’re not good at. And so to buy what you’re not good at means you don’t buy Bungie, because Bungie makes console games. Sony’s good at that. Buy King, buy Zinga, buy Supercell, buy Peak Games, buy somebody who knows how to make live service free-to-play games. Buy Respawn. We didn’t know that Vince Zampella could do it, but he did. But no, I think Sony has lost its way.
For its part, Sony recently acknowledged that its live service efforts haven’t gone smoothly, but it also promised to learn from its mistakes.
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