Project Espresso Looks Like Fairgame$ and the Heists Look Absolutely Mental
Project Espresso is a competitive third-person PvPvE game where crews infiltrate high-security locations, steal valuable cargo and escape while other teams are trying to do exactly the same thing. And yes, the evidence connecting it to Sony and Haven Studios' long-missing Fairgame$ is extremely strong.
Sony and Haven still haven't confirmed they're the same game, so we're keeping the handcuffs off that particular suspect for now.
What we can say with confidence is considerably more interesting anyway: after three years of Fairgame$ being mostly a logo, a trailer and the vague promise of robbing rich people, we finally have something resembling an actual heist.
Want to see how this robbery compares with the games already committing felonies professionally? Our Best Heist Games ranking has the current criminal competition lined up against the vault wall.
So What the Hell Is Project Espresso?
Registrations have opened for a closed pre-alpha test of Project Espresso on PS5 and PC.
The public description calls it a third-person competitive PvPvE action game. Teams enter high-security locations, steal valuable cargo and try to escape before competing crews do.
That's already a remarkably clean heist loop:
Get in. Steal the thing. Get out. Deal with everyone else trying to steal the thing.
There is a beautiful simplicity to this.
Most multiplayer games eventually invent seventeen currencies, six seasonal progression tracks and a menu containing something called Tactical Prestige Tokens. Project Espresso currently has the decency to begin with burglary. And burglary involving other burglars is immediately interesting.
A normal heist game asks whether your crew can defeat the security protecting the score. PvPvE adds another problem: somewhere in the building is another group of armed idiots who have looked at your stolen property and decided they would quite like it.
You can execute the difficult part perfectly and still discover that your getaway plan now includes being mugged by another getaway team. That's criminal efficiency.
The Fairgame$ Connection Is Extremely Strong, but Still Unconfirmed
Project Espresso looks suspiciously familiar.
Fairgame$ was announced by Haven Studios in 2023 as a competitive heist game for PS5 and PC. Its basic fantasy involved crews targeting heavily protected locations belonging to the ultra-rich and competing over the spoils.
Project Espresso is a competitive heist game being tested on PS5 and PC in which crews target high-security locations and compete over stolen valuables.
There is circumstantial evidence, and then there is finding a man standing beside a broken window wearing your television as a hat. Still, circumstantial is circumstantial.
Sony and Haven have not publicly confirmed that Project Espresso is Fairgame$, so any headline announcing that Fairgame$ has officially returned is currently getting ahead of the evidence.
There's another wrinkle. Sony trademarked Break In earlier this year and registered matching social accounts, leading to speculation that Fairgame$ could eventually reappear under a new name.
Maybe Fairgame$ becomes Break In. Maybe Project Espresso is simply the testing codename. Maybe Sony has a cupboard containing three names for one game and nobody can find the key.
For now:
Project Espresso exists. Its heist premise is confirmed. Project Espresso being Fairgame$ is very likely, but not official.
If Project Espresso really is Fairgame$, PAYDAY is the enormous masked elephant in the vault. See which PAYDAY 3 jobs actually deliver the best heists, and which one deserves to be abandoned beside the getaway van.
The Heist Structure Is Starting to Look Much More Interesting
The public description only confirms the broad loop, but reporting around the test material points toward something more elaborate.
That reported structure involves locating access to a vault, collecting cash and upgrades, breaching the objective, securing the cargo and then reaching extraction.
Those finer details haven't been publicly confirmed by Sony or Haven, so treat them as reported test mechanics rather than commandments carved into a PS5.
But if they survive into the eventual game, this is where Project Espresso starts becoming genuinely interesting.
Because there is an enormous difference between a shooter with loot and a multiplayer game organised around committing a robbery. The second needs friction.
A vault should be a problem before it becomes a prize. Security should force decisions. The getaway should matter because carrying something valuable changes the situation. Rival crews should create opportunities beyond simply providing additional human-shaped things to shoot.
That last part could be the entire game. Imagine another crew doing the expensive, dangerous work of finding access, breaching the objective and securing the cargo, only for your team to intercept them on the way out.
You haven't completed a heist.
You've robbed a robbery.
There should be a separate criminal qualification for that.
What We Still Don't Know Is Pretty Important
Project Espresso has now demonstrated enough to look like a real heist game. It hasn't demonstrated enough to tell us whether it's a good one.
We don't yet know how meaningful stealth will be. We don't know how much planning crews actually get to do. We don't know whether security systems create interesting problems or merely delay the shooting. We don't know how progression or monetisation will work.
Most importantly, we don't know whether the PvPvE structure produces tense criminal improvisation or turns every carefully planned robbery into twelve people shooting each other beside a van.
Earlier reporting around Fairgame$ wasn't universally encouraging. An April report based on testing described a Cargo Heist mode with vaults, looting, extraction and respawns, while also claiming the project was still struggling to "find the fun." That matters because the central idea sounds excellent on paper.
Robbery games already generate tension from the gap between the plan and what actually happens. Adding rival human crews could make that gap enormous. Your carefully organised operation can be ruined by another crew appearing at exactly the wrong moment, which is potentially magnificent because human beings are extraordinarily talented at arriving precisely when they are least wanted. Ask anyone who has ever ordered furniture between 8am and 6pm.
But PvPvE can also swallow the heist.
If vaults, infiltration and escape ultimately become elaborate scenery surrounding ordinary team deathmatches, then Fairgame$ has spent years developing the world's most complicated method of arranging a gunfight.
That's the question Project Espresso now has to answer.
Still browsing for your next terrible financial decision involving masks and somebody else's property? Head into CRIMENET's Heist Games hub and keep digging.
Fairgame$ Finally Has Something Worth Watching
Whatever name eventually appears on the box, Project Espresso has done something Fairgame$ badly needed.
It has made the robbery understandable.
The original pitch had style, rich targets and plenty of talk about pulling off heists your own way. Project Espresso gives that fantasy a much clearer skeleton: infiltrate a protected location, secure something valuable, survive competing crews and escape with the score.
That's a proper foundation for a heist game.
Everything interesting now depends on what happens between those verbs.
If security, vault access, rival crews and extraction genuinely interact, Sony could have something much stranger than another extraction shooter: a game where planning a robbery is only half the job because several other criminals are simultaneously planning to rob your robbery.
If they don't, it's people shooting each other near an expensive safe.
For the first time in years, finding out which one Fairgame$ becomes actually sounds interesting.
Comments