We ABSOLUTELY Need to Talk About Concord

[Music] firewalk Studios Concord launched roughly two weeks ago to very little notable response sales allegedly sit at around 25,000 copies while the overall critical response is seemingly one giant me with a 62 Metascore based on 40 critical reviews it quickly became known as this took how many years to develop and it had how many Peak concurrent players on Steam there were expectations that it would chug along with its road map and add that promised cosmetic store with microtransactions oblivious to plummeting player counts however in a recent Playstation blog post firewalk announced the unexpected Concord is being pulled from storefronts on September 6th thr a smoke screen not only will all customers on PC and PS5 receive refunds but the competitive shooter will also go offline if you purchased a physical copy that box has become costlier than the average paper weight or a collector's item either way its road map is out the window and the future is uncertain what spurred this decision aside from well reality being what it is as game director Ryan Ellis noted while many qualities of the experience resonated with players players we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended after Concord goes offline firewalk will explore options which includes those that will better reach our players we've seen a lot of disasters over the past handful of years in video games cyberpunk 2077 launch and being pulled from the PlayStation Store on top of full refunds for players anthem's launch and broken postlaunch promises to say nothing of the devastating impact on bioware's already tarnished reputation Marvel's Avengers and its failures including excessive losses for square en followed by its delisting from all storefronts last year Suicide Squad killed the Justice League especially following recent layoffs at Rocksteady due to its underperformance skull and bones the list goes on however there's probably never been a big budget live service multiplayer title from a major publisher taken offline and refunded in just 2 weeks Concord is officially Sony's biggest failure in years it's yet another indictment of the live service model in a year with no shortage of the same going this way enemy while this situation may be as temporary it's worth noting that there's no ETA for the game's return exploring options could mean anything from completely revamping the core mechanics to transforming it into an entirely different title like say a co-op PVE shooter it could also mean shuttering the entire Endeavor and just cutting losses as much as this measure could be seen as Saving Face you could also view it as Sony not wanting to burn any more money on maintaining servers especially with such low player counts even if server costs weren't the reason there's still the issue of selling a product whose main purpose competitive multiplayer wouldn't have enough players to ensure a steady stream of matches why would the publisher invest in its post-launch support when New Seasons maps and characters clearly won't move the needle imagine how low current numbers must have been if Sony didn't even pretend it could bounce back you could argue that concord's fate was decided back in May the discount Guardians of the Galaxy Aura from the cinematic trailer did little to ignite interest once the gameplay debuted you could feel the near Universal Rejection it wasn't even a one-off phenomenon interest levels were just worryingly low beyond the beta even when it became available to all players on PC and PS5 then again you could go back 2 years to when PlayStation announced it would ship 10 live service titles by March 2026 how the acquisition of Bungie AIDS in their development and consider L accelerates plans per former CEO Jim Ryan emphasis on former considering the number of life service failures by that point there was plenty of skepticism especially when PlayStation had garnered Universal Acclaim for its single player efforts in a world where most developers and Publishers couldn't take the hint about games as a service efforts like Horizon forbidden West rnal ghost of sushima Marvel Spider-Man and more were viewed as beacons of Hope there was some hope that these titles would follow in the footsteps of ghost of sushima excellent Legends mode the Standalone multiplayer title spun off from factions in The Last of Us also held some promise despite little information about its gameplay unfortunately layoffs occurred projects were cancelled and the rest was history Arrowhead Studios hell divers 2 continues to stand out as Sony's lone success in its live service Endeavor despite having a horrific launch due to server issues it's all the more frustrating when it still has fair games from Haven studios in the works there is some hope that it could stand out especially since there aren't many confident Heist titles but time will tell the less set about Bungie's Marathon reportedly facing issues behind the scenes the better even if that's a multi-platform release as for Concord plenty of reasons were cited for its failure charging $40 for a competitive shooter when the market already has Superior free options like OverWatch 2 and valorant heck even valve's deadlock if he got invited was already viewed as ludicrous character designs and kits were uninspired the crew bonuses and persistent deployables were gimmicky and little else the weakly vignettes fulfilled little purpose despite looking graphically pretty ofy rage to go around Target blinded however perhaps worst of all is the lack of a compelling gameplay hook a reason to play and get invested I mean look at Marvel Rivals despite being a hero shooter and taking several cues from OverWatch with many of the same modes that we've seen countless times the closed play test in July peaked at 52,6 71 concurrent players on Steam even with that enthusiasm which far exceeded concord's beta numbers on PC net ease isn't deviating from it's free-to-play model for launch why because on top of knowing how the competition works it wants to surprise surprise make it accessible to as many people as possible no price tag no locking Heroes no PSN account linking crisy nothing getting through this healing I could go on about other live service efforts which have shown that the genre isn't as horrendous as efforts like skull and bone Suicide Squad and now Concord make it out to be but that's besides the point perhaps Sony knew that Concord would underperform and launched it anyway to try and recoup whatever Investments were made maybe it thought that word of mouth could lead to it picking up over time at the very worst You could argue that it was sent to die though I have a hard time believing that Sony would invest in any marketing if that were the case it's saying something when Concord finding a worthwhile direction is the least likely outcome maybe it could happen but for all those comeback stories in the industry there are plenty that don't pan out Sony will keep chugging on at the end of the day perhaps focusing more on the single player titles and Blockbusters that made it such a big deal Concord will fade into memory probably sooner rather than later what will become a firewalk Studios especially given the number of layoffs in recent times is anyone's guess however nothing will change just how unprecedented this whole situation is even after everything we've seen in the live service space to date hey did you know that we at gaming bolt upload new videos every day stick around drop a like subscribe and hit that Bell and let us know what kind of content you'd like to see in the future with a comment below