Jade Raymond left Google’s in-house Stadia studio in February of 2021 to form Haven. At the same time, Google closed down the studio. While it changed focus from developing first-party games to instead bringing more third-party titles to the platform. Not long after the Haven announcement, Raymond confirmed that her and the Haven team were working on a game for the PlayStation platform. And now Haven is part of the PlayStation team. So things have really progressed.
Haven joins PlayStation Studios as another first party developer
Sony is continuing its spree of buying up developers. While Microsoft has made moves to acquire larger studios with numerous AAA titles, Sony has been buying up mostly smaller studios. The perhaps one exception to that over the past year and a half is Bungie. The studio behind the wildly popular Destiny 2 and the studio Sony purchased just before Haven. In addition to Bungie, Sony last year acquired Helsinki-based Housemarque. The game behind PS5-exclusive Returnal. It also purchased Firesprite, Bluepoint Games, Valkyrie Entertainment, and Nixxes Software just to name a few. And all of these studios are joining what is growing to be a world-class collection of game developers. Including Guerilla Games, Sucker Punch Productions, Santa Monica Studios, and Naughty Dog. While there’s not much to know about Haven’s upcoming game yet, it has been confirmed to be an online multiplayer title with an evolving online environment. So there will be plenty of social aspects to it where players can interact with each other. And probably group up for various in-game activities. PlayStation’s Hermen Hulst also states that he and the rest of the PlayStation team are really excited for Haven’s vision for an original multiplayer game for PlayStation. Though Haven may be the latest studio purchase for Sony, it’s probably not the last. Haven is also Sony’s first game development studio based in Canada.
