Why Concord Absolutely Bombed

It looks like "Concord" is officially joining the ranks of countless other live service flops. Today, Firewalk Studios Game Director Ryan Ellis announced in a PlayStation Blog post that the game is being taken offline on September 6. When all is said and done, "Concord" will only have been fully live for two weeks. We knew that the initial "Concord" launch was a disaster, but it's still shocking to see just how quickly the plug is being pulled. Explaining the decision, Ellis wrote, "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." Ellis revealed that sales for the game have already been halted, and Sony will be issuing refunds to anyone who purchased "Concord," though the refund process will vary depending on the platform. 

Firewalk Studios and Sony were no doubt hoping the game would get a warmer reception, but just about everything that could have gone wrong with "Concord" did. Despite spending years in development, the game arguably wasn't really set up to succeed. When the first trailer dropped in June 2024, everyone said that "Concord" looked weirdly underbaked, and there weren't many people excited by the idea of a new hero shooter in a crowded market. "Concord" deserved better than it got, but its failure is part of an ongoing trend that says a lot about the live service space right now. 

The cinematic trailer for "Concord" didn't get people terribly excited, and that's partly because the game's story didn't really seem to match with the actual gameplay. Gamers took note of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" vibes in the trailer, but players argued that they didn't get a sense of who the characters actually were in the full game, and the mechanic of constantly rotating player characters didn't help much. A much bigger issue for gamers, however, was the price point. In a space dominated by games like "Overwatch," "Apex Legends," and other free-to-play titles, $40 was a bridge too far for some players.

Making matters worse, players also had to jump through some extra hoops to play the game. PlayStation Network account holders playing on PS5 could just grab the game from the PlayStation Store and go, but anyone playing on PC had to set up a PSN account and link it to Steam or the Epic store. Sony tried the same tactic with "Helldivers 2," and players revolted so hard that the company had to reverse course and apologize – and that game still took a huge hit in terms of player engagement. "Concord" launched with the PSN requirement, which didn't win the game any extra support.

Leading up to the game's official launch, "Concord" ran into some more stumbling blocks. A beta testing period ran from July 18-21, which was a quick turnaround from the announcement trailer. Players who heard about the beta in time were forced to jump through the same aforementioned PSN hoops, which might help to explain why barely more than 2,000 players showed up.

Even though some players jumped on Reddit and X to express support for the game, early adopters admitted that it did have some serious flaws, including derivative gameplay that didn't add much new to the genre. When professional reviewers got their hands on the game, they said pretty much the same thing. "Concord" currently has a score of 62 on Metacritic, which just isn't strong enough to move the needle in an extremely competitive genre. Ultimately, what gamers were hearing from beta players and professional reviewers wasn't enough to get them to show up for "Concord" when the game actually launched.

Unfortunately, the final straw for "Concord" was the game's actual launch. The poor word of mouth and apathetic fan response to the initial trailer finally caught up with the game, which had an abysmally low concurrent player count in its first week. On Steam, the game peaked at a shocking 697 players, meaning that significantly fewer than half of the people who showed up for the beta checked out the final version of the game.

Those numbers would be bad for a free-to-play game, but they're even worse for a game priced at $40. "Concord" has reportedly made a million dollars, which is like a drop in the ocean compared to the budget a AAA multiplayer game like this requires (and according to Forbes, the game may have cost around $100 million to develop). Add unpopular cosmetic microtransactions and you're just creating a stew of sore subjects for gamers. It's an uphill battle for any live service game to become really popular, and Sony apparently saw the writing on the wall here and decided to take the loss rather than keep the game on life support.

It's impossible to talk about what happened with "Concord" without touching on Sony's larger goals. Back in 2022, the company revealed plans to make a big push into the live service space, with hopes to release 12 different live service by 2025. As part of that move, Sony announced the acquisition of Firewalk Studios in April 2023. Since then, Sony has seemingly changed course. The company canceled a long-in-development multiplayer game set in the world of "The Last of Us," as well as announced an indefinite delay for half of the planned live service games. Though the company has seen hits like "Helldivers 2" this year, the failure of "Concord" (and the continuing underperformance of "Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League") may convince Sony to move away from the volatile live service space. 

"Concord" might not have legions of fans, but the people who were enjoying the game are going to be sad to see it go. Luckily, there's still hope that the game's world might live to see another day. As Ryan Ellis revealed in his PlayStation Blog post, the developers are current reassessing the game to "explore options, including those that will better reach our players." Some hopeful fans online are already hoping that "Concord" could be rereleased in the future as a free-to-play title. Not only that, but Amazon Prime is releasing an animated anthology series called "Secret Level" in December 2024, with the premise being that each episode is set in a different video game universe. An episode based on "Concord" is already slated to be part of the first season. Sony clearly expected great things from "Concord," so this may not be the absolute end.