Concord, the PlayStation hero shooter that recently launched to under 700 players on Steam, will have its servers taken offline just two weeks after its initial launch.
The shocking news came today from Sony and Firewalk Studios, the game’s developer. Concord sales will cease immediately and full refunds will be offered for all players who purchased the game on PS5 or PC.
“Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us,” game director Ryan Ellis said in a statement to Concord players. “However, 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.”
The game will be taken offline this Friday, Sept. 6, while Firewalk will “explore options, including those that will better reach our players.” This language makes it sound as though it’s possible that a free-to-play revival could come somewhere down the line.
The pivot to a full-fledged server takedown as opposed to an immediate free-to-play shift comes as a bit of a shock, but it’s likely that Sony felt the game’s sales numbers were so unbelievably poor, with some negative press around it, that the game was not worth saving.
Concord was reportedly in development for eight years at Firewalk, a studio made up of industry veterans from games such as Destiny and others.
If the eight-year dev cycle is true, it could mean that Concord began development while hero shooters like Overwatch were at the peak of their popularity. The gaming environment has shifted quite a bit since then, including a huge reliance on free-to-play games.
At $40, Concord stood apart from the rest of the genre with a pricetag that apparently was not appealing to players, given what the game had to offer.
