Guerrilla Games has taken a bold step into shared-world territory. The studio best known for the single-player epics Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West has announced Horizon Steel Frontiers, a new MMORPG spinoff developed in partnership with South Korea’s NCSOFT. Revealed in a teaser announcement, the game shifts the series’ rich lore and machine-hunting DNA into a persistent, multiplayer environment set in a region known as the Deadlands. The project promises to retain the franchise’s trademark hunting-action feel while introducing advanced systems more typical of modern MMORPGs, and it’s slated to arrive on iOS, Android, and PC. More concrete details are promised later, but the collaboration already signals a potentially significant evolution for the Horizon universe.
Why this partnership matters
Guerrilla brings expertise in crafting evocative single-player worlds, tightly tuned combat, and strong narrative design. NCSOFT contributes deep experience in building large-scale online ecosystems and monetization strategies, with a portfolio that includes long-running MMO franchises. The combination suggests a game that aims to marry cinematic action design with the social, progression-driven structure of a live service title. For fans, the core question is whether that balance can preserve the visceral joy of hunting towering machines while scaling up to accommodate hundreds or thousands of players.
The Deadlands: a fitting setting
The Deadlands—described in the announcement as a mechanical hunter world—sounds like a natural fit for an MMO. A persistent zone filled with roaming machines, environmental hazards, and contested resources is fertile ground for emergent multiplayer encounters, world events, and factional conflict. The region’s aesthetic and ecological variety could provide distinct biomes for different machine types and playstyles: open plains for massive encounters, dense ruins for stealth and ambush, and vertical canyon networks that encourage cooperative traversal and combat tactics.
How the Horizon combat might evolve
One of the franchise’s greatest strengths has been its combat: tactical, anatomy-aware battles where players exploit weak points, use elemental traps, and craft clever loadouts. Translating that into an MMO context invites several possibilities. Expect group-oriented hunts where roles like trapper, damage dealer, and support are more formalized. Raids and large-scale boss encounters could pit squads of players against colossal machines with multi-stage mechanics that reward coordination. At the same time, retaining responsive, animation-driven combat on mobile and PC will be a technical challenge—one the NCSOFT partnership makes more feasible.
MMO systems to watch for
The announcement highlights “advanced MMORPG systems,” which could encompass traditional features such as class progression, skill trees, gear tiers, crafting, and social systems like clans or guilds. Player-driven economies and territory control are plausible in a setting where resources and spawn zones can matter strategically. Cross-platform play across iOS, Android, and PC is another intriguing angle; seamless progression and matched inputs across devices could broaden the player base but also complicate balance and design.
Monetization and accessibility
Bringing Horizon to mobile platforms inevitably raises questions about monetization and design philosophy. Will Steel Frontiers follow a buy-to-play model with optional cosmetics, or adopt free-to-play structures more common on mobile and some MMOs? NCSOFT’s experience with live monetization could lead to diverse monetization tools, but Guerrilla’s narrative-first pedigree suggests an emphasis on quality content over aggressive monetization. The ideal outcome would be a fair, optional monetization model that funds ongoing content without fragmenting the player community.
Narrative and community expectations
Horizon fans will be watching for how the series’ lore and storytelling translate to a live format. An MMO offers unique opportunities for long-form storytelling—dynamic world narrative arcs, seasonal events, and community-driven milestones—but risks diluting the sharp, character-focused narratives that defined previous entries. Maintaining a sense of wonder and urgency, while allowing players to write their own stories in the Deadlands, will be a core challenge.
Technical hurdles and opportunities
Delivering a visually striking, mechanically deep MMO across PC and mobile will require robust engineering. Performance, network stability, and input parity need careful attention to ensure combat remains satisfying. On the flip side, the genre shift opens doors to persistent emergent content: machine migration cycles, player-built outposts, and large-scale PvE and PvP conflicts that evolve over time.
Final thoughts
Horizon Steel Frontiers is an ambitious undertaking that could expand the franchise in exciting directions—or stumble if it fails to marry Horizon’s action-focused identity with the demands of a live MMO. The Guerrilla-NCSOFT alliance is promising on paper; it pairs creative world-building and action design with the infrastructure and operational experience necessary to run a live service. For players, the announcement is a moment of cautious optimism: the prospect of hunting machines alongside friends in a persistent Deadlands is compelling, but delivery will depend on how faithfully the core mechanics are preserved and how respectfully the game treats players across platforms.
We’ll learn more as Guerrilla and NCSOFT reveal details about combat systems, progression models, monetization, and release timing. For now, Horizon fans and MMO players alike have reason to be intrigued—Steel Frontiers could become one of the most interesting genre crossovers of the next console cycle.
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