A new rumor says that Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios PS5-exclusive game could be an online “games-as-a-service” (or GaaS) title. The rumor comes by way of an anonymous source to the Italian outlet Multiplayer.it, allegedly a message from a recruiter working on behalf of Sony to hire for the developer. However, the rumor comes with a fair amount of caveats that require a few grains of salt to digest. On the one hand, it’s obvious information to infer given what we know. On the other, the rumor comes from a source that hasn’t been validated yet.
The message that Multiplayer.it got ahold of was reportedly sent to them by a contact “in the world of triple A game development” who got it from a recruiter, so it’s already being washed through multiple channels at this point. The message is below, with the role being hired for removed at some point in the chain of contact in order to protect the identity of both the recruiter and the developer who was sent the recruitment message.
I work for Haven Games, a Montreal studio funded by Sony and directed by Jade Raymond, to whom we owe franchises such as Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs.
….
He’s looking to add a [developer role] to the team to help develop an original intellectual property: a Sony-exclusive GaaS Online.
There are a few curious things about this alleged message that stick out, however. The recruiter message calls the studio “Haven Games,” despite the name of the developer up to this point always being “Have Studios” or just “Haven.” The message also appears to refer to Jade Raymond as “he,” and the phrasing “a Sony-exclusive GaaS Online” is quite odd wording. There’s certainly a possibility some of this could be lost in translation somewhere along the way (it’s unknown what language the original recruitment message was sent in before being provided to Multiplayer.it, who posted it in Italian, which was then translated into English by us).
If the above message is true, it doesn’t speak to the magnitude of the alleged GaaS aspects of Haven Studios’ game. Countless games these days have online and “service” components, whether its full ongoing multiplayer games or regular updates to single-player adventures. Games-as-a-Service is broad terminology that could apply to virtually any ongoing content plan that involves updating and adding to the game post-release in any way, and it could have been highlighted specifically in this recruitment message because that’s the role that was being hired for.
We do already know that the game from Haven Studios will have multiplayer thanks to job listings we saw last month, which already all but confirms some kind of GaaS aspect. If Sony is helping Haven get a multiplayer game going, it’s going to want to have a long-term content plan and roadmap for monetization. That’s just smart business. It would honestly be more surprising if they were making a multiplayer game that didn’t have a “service” aspect attached to it.
Jade Raymond founded Haven Studios after her Stadia team went defunct. The developer is working with Sony on a PS5-exclusive title—an original IP—and has acquired industry talent from a variety of places, including additional people she had worked with at Stadia.
There are currently no release windows or additional official news about the game out of Haven Studios.
[Source: Multiplayer.it; Via: PSU]
