Less than two months after Sony took its live service hero-shooter Concord offline after a disastrous launch, the company announced Tuesday it was shutting down developer Firewalk Studios and closing the book on the infamous game. Firewalk employees will depart Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) and the PlayStation parent will “permanently sunset” the game, admitting that it did not hit its targets with the multiplayer title. In addition to shuttering the Concord developer, Sony said it was also closing mobile games developer Neon Koi.
Firewalk Studios Closed
Firewalk's closure marks the end of an ignominious chapter for Sony, that saw the company launch Concord on August 23 to the sound of crickets. The $40 hero-shooter failed to find an audience in a competitive genre full of free-to-play options, peaking out at a dismal 697 concurrent players on Steam before it was scrubbed from PlayStation and PC storefronts and taken offline less than two weeks after release.
“We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options,” Hermen Hulst, CEO of Studio Business Group at SIE, said in an internal email to employees. “After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.”
Hulst said certain aspects of Concord did not appeal to enough players, despite some of its “exceptional” qualities. “The PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that's continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title. We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.”
In an X (formerly Twitter) post Tuesday, Firewalk Studios signed off one last time, hailing its development team as “truly world-class".
“We took some risks along the way – marrying aspects of card battlers and fighting games with first-person-shooters – and although some of these and other aspects of the IP didn't land as we hoped, the idea of putting new things into the world is critical to pushing the medium forward,” the studio said in the post.
Firewalk is signing off one last time.
— Firewalk (@FirewalkStudios) October 29, 2024
Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience. Along the way we assembled an incredible team who were able to:
- Navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic: Firewalk was…
Sony said the decision to shut both Firewalk and Neon Koi was given serious thought and was ultimately the right one to “strengthen the organization”. The company also said it would work to place laid off employees from both developers within its global portfolio of game studios where possible.
Concord Failure
Firewalk Studios was formed in 2018 as a part of ProbablyMonsters, headed by Bungie veterans. Sony acquired the developer in April 2023 and reportedly pumped over $200 million into its first game, Concord. Industry insiders have claimed that the shooter, which Sony acquired as part of its live-service push, cost a reported $400 million to make and consequently represents Sony's biggest loss ever on a game.
A retro-futuristic sci-fi hero-shooter with an art-style and witty banter that resembled Guardians of the Galaxy, Concord launched on August 23 at a $40 price tag. The game was practically dead on arrival, with an estimated 10,000 copies sold on Steam and around 15,000 on PlayStation Store.
Double-digit concurrent player counts led to Sony taking the game offline on September 6 and issuing refunds to all players who had purchased the game. At the time, the company said it would “explore options,” which led some to believe that Concord might return in a different form, perhaps as a free-to-play title or on Sony's game subscription service, PlayStation Plus.
In our review of Concord, we said the game was a “serviceable first-person hero-shooter, very much in the vein of Overwatch” that failed to distinguish itself in a crowded field in meaningful ways.
