More PlayStation live-service seems doomed-to-fail with Marathon and Fairgames$ ready to follow Concord’s footsteps 

Recently Sony declared they are continuing their pursuit of gold with the live-service genre. They struck oil once with the incredible success of Helldivers 2, but everything else has been a failure from numerous cancelled projects such as The Last of Us Factions to the abysmal launch of Concord. Sony’s next two live-service games set to come out are Marathon and Fairgames$, and PlayStation’s live-service ambitions seem doomed with Marathon and especially Fairgames$ teetering on the cusp of failure, much like the infamous Concord.

Fairgames$

Although Marathon has suffered a lot of woes recently such as controversy over stolen artwork and divisive reactions to playtests, Fairgames$ appears to be the live-service project that is even more in danger of being dead on arrival.

If you forgot about this game, we wouldn’t blame you as we haven’t seen anything of Fairgames$ other than a CGI announcement trailer back in May 2023. Per the PlayStation Blog, it is described as a “fresh, modern take on the heist genre” with plans to come out on PS5 and PC.

As if not seeing the game for over two-years isn’t worrying enough, there have been worrying reports. According to Jeff Grubb, it has been delayed internally to 2026, and in May the game’s developer, Haven, lost its studio founder. In addition, according to Colin Moriarty of Sacred Symbols, a pre-alpha under the codename Project Hearts yielded nothing but negative feedback such as it feeling “super clunky” and “doesn’t feel good to play”.

What’s even worse for Fairgames$ is the fact it’s also entirely a new IP, meaning it doesn’t have emotional attachment from nostalgia. In addition, it’s developed by a new studio that doesn’t have a big name, reputation, or following unlike Bungie.

If it does launch in 2026, it will also likely come with the hurdle of a premium price similar to Concord. Sony could try giving it away as a free PS Plus Essential for a month, but that doesn’t guarantee people will try it as the free Concord playtests resulted in little-to-no attraction.

And, lest we forget, everything in 2026 will be competing with GTA 6. Grand Theft Auto 6 is currently scheduled for May 26th, and it will completely crush anything that comes out within its vicinity. Not to mention it will also act as a live-service experience thanks to its highly-anticipated Online mode. And, even if Fairgames$ gives GTA 6 a wide berth by coming out months after, it could find itself in a sticky situation where it has to try to compete with annual mega sports games and Call of Duty.

Marathon

Now onto Marathon. It was scheduled to come out in September, but it has been delayed with no new release date announced. Bungie has stated we will learn more about its new release date plans in Fall, which leads to the belief that the developer is probably planning for early 2026.

An early 2026 launch would be ideal because it avoids GTA 6 and, as of writing, there’s nothing competitive scheduled for the early months of next year. However, there are big problems the game is facing, to the point where even Forbes’ Paul Tassi, who is widely regarded a big fan of Bungie and Destiny, has warned “Marathonis in deep trouble, and it will take something of a miracle for this game to land the way Sony wants it to as an industry hit”.

While stolen artwork has hogged the headlines, there has also been the issue of poor reactions to alphas. The audience for Marathon appears hard to define with Bungie even telling fans of Destiny that Marathon is “probably not the game for you”.

In addition to not appealing to the masses of Destiny, which is the bulk of the Bungie fandom, Marathon will not be free-to-play either, meaning everyone sceptical about the multiplayer experience will need to fork over cash to try it. Helldivers 2 massively succeeded with a premium fee and February release, but it will be near impossible for Marathon to repeat Arrowhead’s record-breaking player counts because Helldivers 2 wasn’t bogged down by controversy and negativity before launch.

While Marathon won’t be as big of a failure to the point it gets delisted from the PSN store with severs removed just one week after release, it can still be a failure for PlayStation because of how much Sony have invested in Bungie. Sony reportedly completed a $3.7 billion deal to buy Bungie in July 2022, and, if Marathon is not a hit in the live-service market with strong player counts and people spending money on microtransactions, it will basically be a wasted investment.