Concord's Failure Is Only Going To Get More Embarrassing In December

Sony's attempt to break into the hero shooter genre backfired when "Concord" absolutely bombed. The game debuted on August 23, and Sony pulled the plug on its servers on September 6, making "Concord" one of the shortest-lived AAA live service games of all time. No one could have predicted just how quickly "Concord" would get shut down, but even before the game's disastrous launch, it seemed oddly doomed to fail.

Releasing a $40 hero shooter in 2024 is an utterly baffling decision to some fans, especially when the genre is already crowded with popular free-to-play games like "Overwatch 2" and "Apex Legends." It would take an extremely compelling concept to get players on board, and gamers were unfortunately underwhelmed by the "Concord" reveal trailer and the game's open beta in July. "Concord" was basically dead on arrival, and with a peak of fewer than 700 concurrent players on Steam, Sony apparently decided it wasn't worth supporting the game through even a single season.

The story of "Concord" is a real tragedy for the developers at Firewalk Studios and the smattering of fans that enjoyed the game. People spent years working on "Concord," and seeing it get axed so quickly has to hurt for the folks who spent sleepless nights making the game a reality. The silver lining in all this mess should be that the devs can quickly move on to another project. Unfortunately, the epic failure of "Concord" is going to be dredged up again when the game shows up in a major Amazon Prime series this December.

In December, Amazon is releasing an animated anthology series called "Secret Level." The show will feature more than a dozen standalone stories set in various video game universes. Of course, there are going to be some classics like "Mega Man" and "God of War," but the show is designed to highlight some newer titles. "Concord" made the cut, and even though the game will be long buried by the time the show debuts, IGN's sources report that the game is still going to be featured.

Of course, the "Concord" episode of "Secret Level" has probably been finished for a long time at this point, and like the game itself, the episode probably wasn't cheap to make. Sony might be cutting its losses, but Amazon isn't going to just drop an episode of the series. Unless the game has somehow been resurrected by the end of 2024, the "Concord" episode will unfortunately stand as a grim reminder of what happened with the game. 

Then again, maybe it will manage to breathe some life back into the IP. After all, "Concord" had a pretty clearly defined world and some interesting characters, even if the gameplay side of the equation was ill-fated.