New PlayStation-owned IP Concord has gotten off to a rocky start in its first week since launch—and the players who enjoy the game are worried.
Concord peaked at just under 700 players on Steam over its launch weekend as a day-and-date console exclusive that also launched on PC, and the gaming community has been dogpiling on it ever since.
“It’s clear that in terms of public opinion and discourse, Concord has not performed well,” the poster of an Aug. 27 Reddit thread said. “We’ve all seen the trolls on this sub circling like vultures, delighting in Concord’s lack of success, and also a lot of people getting overly defensive and responding with an equal lack of good faith. We have to be realistic about what’s happened.”
I’m of the same ilk in that I enjoy Concord but don’t think it does anything to separate itself from the pack in the hero shooter/FPS genre, nor does it justify the $40 price tag in a sea of free-to-play games. I said as much myself last month about the game’s beta, thinking it’d need an F2P pivot to find any success.
“I would guess either PlayStation Plus or actually going full free-to-play, followed by arcane financial moves to minimize the real loss,” one player said. “And then… death.”
You could list any number of reasons as to why Concord has not found success, including an oversaturated market, a high price tag, an unimpressive roster, and more. But the bottom line is that the negative sentiment around the game has scared others off from even giving it a shot, too.
Concord would not be the first game to struggle out of the gates and end up shutting down. Many in the Reddit thread mentioned titles like LawBreakers, Battleborn, Gigantic, and Loadout as games that just couldn’t find a foothold in the market. But not all players are failing to find some silver lining.
“Everyone I’ve played every single match with instantaneously has been PS5 players,” they said. “While this game is by no means a smashing success, I feel judging the game solely on Steam player count is disingenuous. I think we will see a strong core PS5 player base. It may not be huge but more than enough to play and get matches easily.”
We won’t know about Concord’s future until PlayStation or the dev team at Firewalk addresses it, but dark days could be ahead. This would obviously be a huge loss for Sony, and a loss as well for players who find the game to be fun despite all of the negative criticism surrounding it.
