Sony's Live-Service Gamble Crumbling: Troubling Development of Marathon and Fairgame$

Sony's plans to enter live-service gaming are still in trouble. Two of its most anticipated upcoming games, Bungie's Marathon and Haven Studios' Fairgame$, are facing growing concerns, such as internal changes and failed playtests, as well as a worrying lack of marketing plans. These updates make Sony's whole live service plan look questionable. 

Bungie's Marathon was first shown off at the PlayStation Showcase in May 2023. It is a PvP-focused extraction shooter and a new start for the classic sci-fi series that started in the 1990s. The new Marathon, which was supposed to come out in late 2024, was meant to be Bungie's first live-service game after Destiny 2. But, as Moriarty said, there are signs that the project might be in trouble.

Sources who know how the game is marketed overseas say that there are no plans for paid advertising for Marathon right now. This doesn't happen very often for a game of this size, especially one that is meant to be the main part of Sony's $2 billion live service commitment. A lot of money is usually spent on marketing a game before it comes out, especially for a new online multiplayer game that needs to get a lot of players to stick with it. 

The lack of such planning makes people inside Sony question their faith in the product and suggests that the company may be rethinking its release strategy behind the scenes. As of now, there is no formal word on a delay, but rumors are growing. Marathon has already been in trouble because of plagiarism claims in its concept work. 

Some of the visual assets used in ad materials were found to look a lot like art from Artstation user "Anti-reality," which led to accusations of asset theft. Even though Bungie hasn't said much about the claims in public, the controversy has only made people feel worse about the project. This is made worse by doubts about Marathon's main gameplay. 

Participants in the early playtest were not said to be excited about the game. People are saying bad things about the game, which is an increasingly popular type of extraction shooter when compared to other new games like ARC Raiders, which is getting more attention for its fun gameplay and unique graphics. 

Some reviewers have said that Marathon's fighting doesn't feel new, and the game's once-praised visual style isn't enough to make it stand out in a crowded field. Bungie has been having trouble behind the scenes. In late 2023, the company had to lay off a lot of people, and after Sony bought it for $3.6 billion in 2022, it lost some of its long-term independence. 

Internal projects like Gummy Bears have been shelved, and hiring has been changed to better meet Sony's needs. Bungie still has some freedom and is working on making Marathon a cross-platform game that can be played on both Xbox and PC, but the company's future looks less certain if this big release fails.

The situation is also not good for Fairgame$, the first game from Haven Studios, a Canadian company started by veteran game creator Jade Raymond and later bought by Sony in 2022. Fairgame$ was announced at the PlayStation Showcase along with Marathon. It was billed as a stylish shooter with a "Robin Hood" theme. But its growth seems to be going nowhere.

Moriarty says that a pre-alpha version of the game was sent to a small group of testers through the PlayStation Network while hiding its true name as Project Heart. These testers were told they were under NDA. The plan was to get early feedback, but reports say the results were terrible. People who played said it was like a weird mix between a battle royale game and an extraction shooting game. They said it was like Fortnite, Payday, and Ubisoft's The Division.

Some say that Fairgame$ has bad features, unclear direction, and not enough interesting ways to play compared to those more polished games. Early playtests of the game showed that it was technically rough and conceptually unclear. At first, it was thought to be a co-op heist game like Payday, but feedback suggests that it's more geared toward competitive PvPvE games with not much new to make it stand out.

The problems with the development may have been the reason why Jade Raymond quietly quit Haven Studios earlier this year. Industry sources say Raymond quit after internal goals and playtests showed deeper problems with the game's potential, but Sony hasn't said anything about this publicly. Because she was the project's founder and artistic lead, her leaving was a huge blow.

Sony was going to use Fairgame$ as one of its main titles for its new live service. However, setbacks in development, bad responses, and the loss of key leaders have quickly made people lose faith in the game.

The disappointing events with Marathon and Fairgame$ are not one-offs; they are part of a larger pattern of problems with Sony's live service plan, which was meant to balance out its dominance in single-player, story-driven games. When Sony bought Bungie, they set the lofty goal of releasing at least 12 live service games by the end of the fiscal year 2025. After internal reviews, delays, and cancellations, that goal has been cut in half to six.

The Tragic End of The Last of Us: Factions, made by Naughty Dog, was supposed to be a big live-service game, but was shelved after years of work. The studio's leaders decided that the help that would be needed after the launch would strain their resources and take them away from what they do best. 

This choice was similar to the problems Marathon and Fairgame$ are having right now: live service games need long-term commitment and regular content updates, and companies that are new to this are having a hard time adapting.

So far, Helldivers 2, which was made by Arrowhead Game Studios, is the only big hit for Sony in this area. Critics praised the co-op shooter when it came out in early 2024, and it has kept a high player count ever since, thanks in part to smart community involvement and regular content updates. But this success seems more like the odd one out than the norm. Since then, Arrowhead has gotten more money and is allegedly planning to grow on its own, which could make Sony less able to control what they do next.

With the Summer Game Fest coming up in June, Sony is under increasing pressure to explain its plans for its live service. Marathon and Fairgame$ were once thought to be very important to this plan, but now it looks like they will just join the growing list of projects that are having trouble. If either game comes out the way it is now, Sony could repeat the mistake of Concord, a new live service game that failed to find an audience and was shut down quickly.

For Bungie, the future is very much up in the air. If Marathon fails, the studio may have to do more work on restructuring because they don't have Destiny 3 or any other current projects. And for Haven Studios, a bad first game could make Sony's $200 million investment in the team seem like a waste.

Sony has shown that it can still make great games for one player. But until it changes how it develops live services, the dream of creating an environment that can compete with Fortnite, Apex Legends, or Warzone will stay just that—a dream. There are clear signs that even the most anticipated games can fail if they lack fun gameplay, good technical polish, and ongoing support.