Horizon Hunters Gathering Reportedly Rebooted by Sony

Aug 19, 2026

Sony’s ambitious push into live-service gaming appears to be undergoing another significant change.

PlayStation and Guerrilla Games are reportedly reworking Horizon Hunters Gathering, the cooperative Horizon spin-off announced earlier this year, following negative feedback from private playtests.

According to a new report, the original live-service direction is being stripped back in favor of a smaller and more traditional cooperative multiplayer experience with a story mode.

The game hasn’t been canceled, but its future may depend heavily on what Guerrilla can accomplish over the next several months.

For PlayStation, the reported overhaul represents another notable shift away from the aggressive live-service strategy Sony pursued earlier in the generation.

What Is Changing With Horizon Hunters Gathering?

The biggest reported change concerns the game’s live-service structure.

Guerrilla Games has reportedly been working on a reboot of Horizon Hunters Gathering since June after receiving poor feedback from private testing earlier this year.

Rather than continuing with the original live-service approach, the development team reportedly plans to transform the project into a more conventional cooperative multiplayer game.

The new version is expected to have a smaller overall scope while retaining a story mode.

That’s a significant change considering how Guerrilla originally presented the project.

When Horizon Hunters Gathering was officially announced in February, Guerrilla described it as a cooperative action game built around challenging and replayable hunts, character progression and ongoing storytelling.

The game was designed to allow teams of up to three players to hunt machines together, combining Horizon’s established combat mechanics with cooperative gameplay.

Horizon Hunters Gathering Hasn’t Been Canceled — Yet

Despite the scale of the reported changes, Horizon Hunters Gathering remains in development.

However, the project reportedly faces an important milestone before the end of the year.

Guerrilla has reportedly been given until December to demonstrate the revised game’s potential to PlayStation executives.

That makes the coming months particularly important for the project.

A successful milestone could establish a clearer path forward for the rebooted game. Failure to convince PlayStation leadership could leave its future considerably less certain.

It’s important to emphasize that Sony and Guerrilla Games have not officially announced the reported reboot or suggested that Horizon Hunters Gathering has been canceled.

For now, it remains an active project.

Developers Are Reportedly Being Reassigned

The changes apparently extend beyond the game’s design.

Many developers currently working on Horizon Hunters Gathering will reportedly be moved to another project.

That separate project is also expected to undergo an evaluation toward the end of the year.

The reassignment suggests Guerrilla may be reducing the resources committed to Hunters Gathering while determining whether its new direction can justify continued development.

It also raises questions about what Guerrilla’s other teams are currently building.

The obvious question for Horizon fans is what all of this means for the next mainline single-player game.

What About Horizon 3?

Guerrilla has made no secret of its intention to continue Aloy’s story following Horizon Forbidden West and its Burning Shores expansion.

However, today’s report suggests fans shouldn’t expect the next major single-player Horizon adventure anytime soon.

The next mainline Horizon game is reportedly still years away, with only a relatively small team currently working on the project.

If accurate, that could mean the studio’s investment in Hunters Gathering has occupied substantial development resources that might otherwise have been allocated elsewhere.

Nothing regarding a Horizon 3 release window has been officially announced, so any estimates concerning when it might arrive remain speculation.

Still, the reported situation surrounding Hunters Gathering makes Guerrilla’s development pipeline considerably more interesting.

Sony’s Live-Service Strategy Continues to Change

The reported reboot also matters beyond the Horizon franchise.

Sony spent years building an ambitious live-service strategy designed to expand PlayStation beyond the premium single-player games that have traditionally defined its first-party portfolio.

The results have been mixed.

Helldivers 2 demonstrated that PlayStation can achieve enormous success with the right multiplayer project, but other efforts have struggled.

Concord became the most dramatic example. Sony removed the game from sale and shut down its servers only weeks after launch, later closing developer Firewalk Studios.

Sony has also canceled other planned live-service projects as it reassessed the strategy.

That makes the reported decision surrounding Horizon Hunters Gathering particularly notable.

Rather than pushing ahead with the original concept, PlayStation appears willing to make substantial changes before the game reaches the market.

Could Dropping Live Service Actually Help?

Removing the live-service component doesn’t necessarily mean the core concept behind Hunters Gathering is in trouble.

In fact, a smaller cooperative Horizon game could potentially be an easier proposition to sell to existing fans.

The central idea remains compelling: gather a group of players and use Horizon’s arsenal of bows, traps and specialized weapons to hunt enormous machines together.

Guerrilla’s original announcement described combat as tactical, reactive and skill-based, with different Hunters offering distinct melee and ranged playstyles.

The studio also revealed two modes called Machine Incursion and Cauldron Descent.

Machine Incursion was designed around waves of machines culminating in a boss encounter, while Cauldron Descent offered longer, multi-stage challenges featuring changing rooms and rewards.

Those ideas don’t inherently require an expansive live-service framework.

A focused cooperative action game with a substantial campaign, replayable missions and strong progression could still take advantage of Horizon’s combat systems without requiring players to commit to another constantly evolving online ecosystem.

Whether those previously announced modes survive the reported reboot remains unknown.

Player Feedback May Have Changed the Game

One encouraging element of the story is that the reported changes appear to have occurred before launch.

Guerrilla emphasized player testing when it announced Hunters Gathering, saying feedback would help shape the game.

If private testing exposed fundamental problems with the live-service structure, changing direction now could ultimately produce a better game.

Major development reboots aren’t necessarily good news, particularly when they involve reducing scope and reassigning developers. They can indicate that a project isn’t meeting internal expectations.

But identifying those problems before release is preferable to discovering them after players have already spent money.

The success of the new direction will depend on whether Guerrilla can preserve what works while rebuilding the parts that apparently didn’t connect with testers.

Horizon Hunters Gathering Faces an Important Few Months

There is still a potentially interesting game at the heart of Horizon Hunters Gathering.

Cooperatively hunting Horizon’s massive machines has obvious potential, and Guerrilla has years of experience designing combat encounters around those creatures.

The question is whether the studio can turn that concept into a multiplayer game players actually want to stick with.

If today’s report is accurate, PlayStation has decided that forcing the project into a larger live-service framework isn’t the answer.

Now Guerrilla reportedly has until December to demonstrate that the smaller, more traditional cooperative version deserves to continue.

For Horizon fans, that makes the next few months particularly important.

Hunters Gathering isn’t dead, but the game that eventually emerges could look considerably different from the one PlayStation introduced earlier this year.