Concord is Sony’s Biggest Failure in Years – What Happened?

Firewalk Studios’ Concord launched roughly two weeks ago to very little notable response. Sales allegedly sit at around 25,000 copies, while the overall critical response is seemingly one giant “meh” with a 62 Metascore based on 40 critical reviews.

It quickly became known as “This took how many years to develop?” and “It had how many peak concurrent players on Steam?”. There were expectations that it would chug along with its roadmap and add that promised cosmetic store with microtransactions, oblivious to plummeting player counts. However, in a recent PlayStation Blog post, Firewalk announced the unexpected – Concord is being pulled from storefronts on September 6th.

Not only will all customers on PC and PS5 receive refunds, but the competitive shooter will also go offline. If you purchased a physical copy, that box has become costlier than the average paperweight or a collector’s item. Either way, its roadmap is out the window, and the future is uncertain.

What spurred this decision, aside from, well, reality being what it is? As game director Ryan Ellis noted, “While many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended.” After Concord goes offline, Firewalk will “explore options,” which includes those that will “better reach our players.”

We’ve seen a lot of disasters over the past handful of years in video games. Cyberpunk 2077’s launch and being pulled from the PlayStation Store on top of full refunds for players. Anthem’s launch and broken post-launch promises, to say nothing of the devastating impact on BioWare’s already tarnished reputation.

Marvel’s Avengers and its failures, including excessive losses for Square Enix, followed by its delisting from all storefronts last year. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (especially following recent layoffs at Rocksteady due to its underperformance). Skull and Bones. The list goes on.

However, there’s probably never been a big-budget live-service multiplayer title from a major publisher taken offline and refunded in just two weeks. Concord is officially Sony’s biggest failure in years. It’s yet another indictment of the live service model in a year with no shortage of the same.

While this situation may be as temporary, it’s worth noting that there’s no ETA for the game’s return. Exploring “options” could mean anything from completely revamping the core mechanics to transforming it into an entirely different title like, say, a co-op PvE shooter. It could also mean shuttering the entire endeavor and cutting losses. As much as this measure could be seen as saving face, you could also view it as Sony not wanting to burn any more money on maintaining servers, especially with such low player counts.

Even if server costs weren’t the reason, there’s still the issue of selling a product whose main purpose – competitive multiplayer – wouldn’t have enough players to ensure a steady stream of matches. Why would the publisher invest in its post-launch support when new seasons, maps and characters clearly won’t move the needle? Imagine how low current numbers must have been if Sony didn’t even pretend it could bounce back.

You could argue that Concord’s fate was decided back in May. The discount Guardians of the Galaxy aura from the cinematic trailer did little to ignite interest. Once the gameplay debuted, you could feel the near-universal rejection. It wasn’t even a one-off phenomenon – interest levels were worryingly low during the beta, even when it became available to all players on PC and PS5.

Then again, you could go back two years to when PlayStation announced it would ship ten live-service titles by March 2026. How the acquisition of Bungie aids in their development and “considerably accelerates” plans, per former CEO Jim Ryan (emphasis on “former”).

Considering the number of live service failures by that point, there was plenty of skepticism, especially when PlayStation had garnered universal acclaim for its single-player efforts. In a world where most developers and publishers couldn’t take the hint about games as a service, efforts like Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok, Returnal, Ghost of Tsushima, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and more were viewed as beacons of hope.

There was some hope that these titles would follow in the footsteps of Ghost of Tsushima’s excellent Legends mode. The standalone multiplayer title spun off from Factions in The Last of Us also held some promise despite little information about its gameplay. Unfortunately, layoffs occurred, projects were cancelled, and the rest was history. Arrowhead Studios’ Helldivers 2 continues to stand out as Sony’s lone success in its live-service endeavor despite having a horrific launch due to server issues.

It’s all the more frustrating when it still has Fairgame$ from Haven Studios in the works. There’s some hope it could stand out, especially since there aren’t many competent heist titles, but time will tell. The less said about Bungie’s Marathon, reportedly facing issues behind the scenes, the better, even if that’s a multi-platform release.

As for Concord, plenty of reasons were cited for its failure. Charging $40 for a competitive shooter when the market already has superior free options like Overwatch 2 and Valorant – heck, even Valve’s Deadlock, if you got invited – was already viewed as ludicrous. Character designs and kits were uninspired. The Crew Bonuses and persistent deployables were gimmicky and little else. The weekly vignettes fulfilled little purpose despite looking graphically pretty.

However, perhaps worst of all, it’s the lack of a compelling gameplay hook – a reason to play and get invested. Heck, look at Marvel Rivals. Despite being a hero shooter and taking several cues from Overwatch, with many of the same modes we’ve seen countless times, the closed playtest in July peaked at 52,671 concurrent players on Steam.

Even with that enthusiasm, which far exceeded Concord’s beta numbers on PC, NetEase isn’t deviating from its free-to-play model for launch. Why? Because on top of knowing how the competition works, it wants to – surprise, surprise – make it accessible to as many people as possible. No price tag. No locking heroes. No PSN account linking.

I could go on about other live-service efforts which have shown that the genre isn’t as horrendous as efforts like Skull and Bones, Suicide Squad, and now Concord make it out to be, but that’s beside the point. Perhaps Sony knew that Concord would underperform and launched it anyway to try and recoup whatever investments were made. Maybe it thought that word-of-mouth could lead to it picking up over time. At the very worst, you could argue that it was sent to die, though I have a hard time believing Sony would invest in any marketing if that were the case.

It’s saying something when Concord finding a worthwhile direction is the least likely outcome. Maybe it could happen, but for all those comeback stories in the industry, there are plenty that don’t pan out. Sony will keep chugging on at the end of the day, perhaps focusing more on the single-player titles and blockbusters that made it such a big deal.

Concord will fade into memory, probably sooner rather than later. What will become of Firewalk Studios, especially given the number of layoffs in recent times, is anyone’s guess. However, nothing will change just how unprecedented this whole situation is, even after everything we’ve seen in the live service space to date.