Documenting the biggest failure in video game history - Concord X Sony

Intro what would you do if you won over $100 million overnight would you buy one of those mythical houses that no one can afford how about a car this one will make everyone laugh at you perfect for family gatherings or perhaps you can just pay off your hospital bill because damn that is a lot of money regardless of what you might choose I'm confident that you'll make the right decision that is of course uh unless you were a Sony executive in which case you'd spend all your money on whatever the this is this is being called the biggest failure in gaming history and surprisingly enough this is not clickbait we can now confirm that this game took a painstaking 8 years to make and people are estimating that this game cost anything from 100 million to 300 million and even better we know how much this game sold on all platforms industry analysts have given a number that they think is the most accurate and guys let me tell you they didn't even make back 1% of their money I'm not even joking the story of Concord is so ridiculous it might as well be a circus but most people only know about its ending about its failure but there's a lengthy backstory and it has to do with Sony's master plan for PlayStation I got all the juicy hilarious details for you so sit back relax and let's talk about this disaster together speaking of disasters I simply cannot defend you here what is your Twitter profile what are you posting this is totally your fault but you know it isn't your fault getting spam emails simply for signing up for a newsletter or a loyalty program don't worry it's not because you're unlucky it's simply because your data is being sold whenever you fill out your info on a website the company associated will sell your information shamelessly with no remorse what's worse is that if you want to remove the data it'll be practically impossible this is where incog comes in it's really simple to do and and I even did it myself because my personal email is a dumpster fire look at these These are actual emails from my inbox what the hell all you got to do is sign up then give them permission to act on your behalf you'll then have access to a dashboard look this is mine right here and you'll see incog remove your data live from these disgusting Shady companies what's even better is that if you use the code muin you get 60% off their plan you'll find the link in the description and the pinned comment get rid of those spam emails and thank you incog for sponsoring this video a How it all began disaster of this magnitude doesn't usually happen overnight no this actually has quite a bit of History during the year 2022 Sony was in the process of acquiring Bungie this deal took months to finalize I think maybe even a year but they got it for $3.7 billion and then announced it on July 16th 2022 but they were talking about it since February 2022 months before they finalized it during a shareholder meeting one of if not the main reason why they acquired Bungie is because they had extensive experience running a live service game ever since they launched Destiny 1 in 2014 Sony like many other developers had seen the player count absolutely multiply by a gazillion players during the pandemic and got excited over the fact that hey maybe we can milk them some more this is a time when these company Executives would have their children start to ask them for v-bucks gift cards and they were shocked they had never seen a video game take over their household quite like this before for this wasn't just limited to PlayStation everyone wanted a life service game that would print them money this is when they would completely shift their priorities during the shareholder meeting they announced that they were working on over 10 different life service titles yes 10 more specifically around 12 and that they aimed to release all of them by March 2026 they Justified the purchase of Bungie saying that this will directly help with those goals this to me just sounds like a massive cope of why they spent so much money acquiring Bungie but regardless even after spending $3 billion on a new studio they still had others that they were interested in that they had their eyes on by then PlayStation had already had friendly relations with firewalk Studios this is a studio that was founded by veteran game developers and a good amount of them actually were ex bunge employees so of course when an executive heard the phrase ex bunge employee they started drooling all over the floor because to them that just meant life service monetization microtransactions just a big old money printer baby over a year passes since that shareholder meeting talking about all those life service games and then on April 2023 PlayStation acquires firewalk Studios here's what the head of PlayStation Studios had to say he said we continue to be impressed by the team's Ambitions to build a modern multiplayer game that connects players in new and innovative ways the Studio shares our passion for creating inspiring worlds grounded in exceptional gameplay and we want to continue to invest in their mission we're excited for firewalk to bring their Technical and creative expertise to PlayStation Studios to help grow our life service operations and deliver something truly special for gamers please join me in welcoming firewalk so if I had to quickly translate this from corporate speak to English it would say guys we're so happy to have these ex bunge employees monetize the ever living out of our upcoming game so that they can print us money that's what this really says but what's interesting here is that at the time we knew nothing of firewalk we knew nothing of what they were working on except a multiplayer game now Sony's known to acquire Studios it likes but usually it's after they prove themselves really well like how they partnered with insomnia games for years but only acquired them after the massive success of Spider-Man so firewalk Studios had a lot of pressure to contend with even before launching their first ever game but they were confident they could handle it now a few months passed by okay we're in November 2023 a few months after they acquired firewalk Studios during a financial call the president and COO of Sony breached the topic of those life service games they're working on he sat there and reminded shareholders about the whole 12 life service games thing only to promptly say that uh well we're cutting that number by half we're hoping to release six now hopefully his reasoning was that we might have not really met the gamers expectations with some of the titles so we're just going to cut it down to six that's our plan one of the games that were meant to launch and have life service elements was a Last of Us multiplayer game worked on by Naughty Dog a month after that call the game from Naughty Dog got cancelled saying that they'll just focus on making a single player game Instead This multiplayer game will probably not meet expectations looking back this probably could have been one of the best decisions they ever made but of course people were still disappointed because they were looking forward to it disappointment though was what people were experiencing during PlayStation's State of Play 2024 was the beginning of the end state of play on May 30th 2024 ever since the death of E3 this has been a way for PlayStation to reveal any new games they're working on and any developments in terms of the console the state of play happens multiple times a year and it's always an event that PlayStation fans look forward to immensely the expectations for these are usually High because PlayStation is known for creating some pretty highquality games but also very few of them there are like no games to play for the PS5 and that's been a complaint since day one this is one of the many reasons why the state of play on May 30th was so important but interestingly enough out of the 35 minutes of this state of play onethird of it went towards one game exclusively and that game is none other than Concord it starts off with the head of product of PlayStation coming in and introducing Concord and firewalk Studios and the amazing work they've been doing behind the scenes and just can't wait to show you what you will love surely right it's clear they spared no expense here they have a whole CGI trailer showing off the characters and the world that you're about to experience in Concord and other than the chat being very positive about this game uh it was clear that this wasn't really the reaction they were hoping for this CGI trailer was meant to introduce you to the characters and make you like them but all it did was just appear to be a Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff which it is by the way it's a very very obvious Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff with a very uninspired twist not even halfway through the CGI trailer and you could tell people were over the characters the story and the writing they were hoping that at least the game play would be decent that it would redeem this game all those hopes were shattered immediately as soon as they realized that this was yet another team shooter some of the gameplay looked fun it looked interesting I mean honestly the gamep playay isn't too bad but there are already too many of these on the market and this one just looks like the worst out of all of them why would you play this over something like OverWatch but they were really convinced that they had the formula to take over any competitor because of how interesting their characters were they had some really big plans every week when you would log in you would see a new cut scene with characters on your ship interacting further building the world and their relationships but there was one problem they didn't really foresee we couldn't care less they are terrible characters they're so generic and lame they had onethird of the entire state of play and they couldn't make us like a single character just one they couldn't after 8 years of development now look from past examples of criticism like this I don't think it's that hard to determine how the developers took this feedback they saw both YouTube chat and twitch chat and thought to themselves oh these are such bigoted and angry Gamers I'm so glad that I'm not making the game for them so they just proceeded to close their ears and move on like nothing happened they set their sights on the beta that was launching on July for both PS5 and PC and they were of course confident that this was going to be the proof they needed to show that this game was going to be an amazing success but one thing to keep in mind is that people up until this point didn't even know that the game was going to cost money to play they were under the impression that this is a free-to-play game and they were already hating on it okay they didn't know that this game cost $40 they completely ignored this whole pre-order starting period thing that showed up in the live stream if anything it just seemed like an extra bonus pack you could buy and yet they were still very disappointed as soon as this game was revealed there were articles talking about how badly it was The reception was a disaster received how negative the reaction was other than the fact that it looked Bland and just generic people didn't like the fact that it was yet another 5v5 firstperson shooter one commenter said the cutscene sold me on an adventure they're talking about the CGI trailer that played first but then said the very next words out of the developer's mouth is 5v5 FPS so interest gone and I should specify again these people saying this most of them had no idea that this was going to cost $40 on launch day after the reveal the staff working on the game was getting criticized so heavily on Twitter that the lead character designer left the platform only to come back later saying I'm coming back for two things one hype for Concord and love for my fellow game devs two mute block anything that is remotely toxic and or doesn't relate to one the game hadn't even launched yet but the community's negative feedback was already starting to get to the developers and it was obvious but this was only the beginning of the criticism day one of the open Beta which anyone could join on PC had 2,388 players that's it okay that is it now we don't know how much PlayStation had it probably had way more because there's a huge shortage of games to play but this didn't look good at all an open Beta usually receives many players because it's free and people are curious but this showed that even people's curiosity wasn't enough to play a free game but why what was the logic here how did players really feel the people in this thread make some very good points the top comment says it's a hero shooter that requires a PSN account it's going to cost $40 and doesn't look that great to begin with what did they expect and look at this reply right here this costs money I thought it was going to be free LOL who's charging for hero Shooters nowadays so thanks to this open Beta people were finding out wait a second this costs money I wasn't even that interested to begin with now I'm not interested at all to make matters worse Monetization & Marketing didn't help they weren't just going to charge you $40 to buy the game but no you also had internal microtransactions I mean it's a life service game guys they want to milk you as much as possible but the developers were sure to let you know that guys don't worry it's only cosmetic which made people obviously dislike the game more and want to avoid it but don't worry guys it was all just noise they're just a bunch of bigoted haters we're going to carry on with our top tier marketing and let the game speak for itself I mean look at this controller doesn't that actually look sick like objectively I would actually buy this not the game though keep the game away from me but I would buy this controller this is sick damn maybe their marketing isn't that bad but that's not all you also had first party PlayStation Studios participate in the marketing like Sucker Punch Productions post featuring a character from one of their games with a character from con ORD how cool is that now I saw some people say wow Sony's so desperate having all their Studios make art with Concord but buddy listen I've been following PlayStation and their Studios on Facebook since I was like 12 years old and I can tell you even back then they did this they do this to any game launching from a first party Studio it's just it's it's nothing special but it just showed how much they were banking on this they were treating this game like yet another first party launch as if it's from Sucker Punch or Insomniac you want to know what the difference is though usually they don't have to turn off replies usually they don't have to do that this makes it definitely unique that's for sure now Naughty Dog didn't do any art but they still advertised the game but they hid some replies again something you don't typically see on a post like this and yes it's blurred because there's a few words here that would immediately demonetize the video PlayStation's account announced this too and look the marketing was in full swing a new first party game had just come out let's make some noise the lead character designer of firewalk Studios of Concord made a tweet when the game launched saying today firewalk Studios launched play Concord the game has been in development for around 8 years yes eight eight the number before nine and I've been there for almost five of them we don't get a lot of launch days in our careers so today is special for a ton of reasons oblig me some good vibes today this was the first time that this information was revealed to us no one really quite understood when the game started development and when it finished uh 8 years people were absolutely baffled and speaking of baffled people just couldn't believe how unlikable some Concord devs are very likeable part I of the developers on this team were it didn't just have to do with them not being able to take any feedback or criticism but it also had to do with how well they'd insult the entire player base like this ex developer right here tweeting out when the game came out saying it's Concord release day so insanely proud of the team and what they and we have accomplished a labor of love like nothing else been playing it so much since early access started a few days ago and I'm so excited for it to be available to everyone he then continues and says and I'm so honored to have had this be my first AAA game was a huge learning experience lots of struggles but I'm glad to have gone through them time to go play then someone replied saying I'm so sorry this has to be your first I do not believe it is you or any of the other Developers fault that this game has performed so poorly I can tell that a lot of effort was put into completing this game it just came out at the wrong time in genre the ex developer replied with this saying eh I don't really care it was a huge labor from a lot of insanely talented people making an awesome game why would I care about a bunch of talentless freaks hating on it I'm sure having fun playing it and I wouldn't trade it for anything another user came in and said talentless freaks I actually came to drop some positive criticism but get clearly based on the game you're the one with no Talent the developers were getting a lot of criticism a lot of warranted criticism I should add but their attitude was that it was all toxic bigoted noise that anything those players were saying was unwarranted it was starting to get clear how this game got made over the span of 8 years this wasn't about receiving good feedback they were in an echo chamber patting themselves on the back every day truly thinking that they were going to come up with the next big hit that will revolutionize gaming otherwise they wouldn't have this attitude so when the game launched ignore these numbers okay The most catastrophic game launch in history the game's been already shut down but when the game launched they peaked at 650 no 660 yeah 660 not too bad 660 players on August 23rd around the time it launched but then kept going down without increasing again this was a game that was $40 developed over the course of eight years and it was doing worse than an indie game made by one person but of course the idea here is that this is PC well I have a good estimate of how much they sold on Playstation from reliable sources and we'll get to that later but let me tell you it's a catastrophe now at this point people were asking themselves what's next because this wasn't the first time we saw a live service game failure an utter failure earlier in the same year of 2024 we witnessed a catastrophe of a game Suicide Squad by Rocksteady Studios I'm not even joking I think I have to censor The Game's name because of YouTube's policies this led to a $200 million hit to revenue because it sold so poorly but the game is still live today you can still play it even though there's like barely a 100 players at any time playing this game they just didn't shut it down yet so people weren't expecting Sony to admit their failure but they did and it was extremely quick barely two weeks after the game had released Sony said yeah you know what guys uh we're shutting down the servers and everyone's getting a refund like immediately it didn't even take a month people were saying this game is going to die in a month while they were joking but little did they know it was only going to take barely 2 weeks they were extremely quick with that decision on September 3rd the game director at firewalk Studios Ryan Ellis made a post on Playstation blog saying an important update on Concord it was very brief but it said all you needed to really know Concord fans we've been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who has joined the journey aboard the Northstar does he mean looking at all the feedback and calling everyone talentless freaks is that what he means anyway he continues your support at the passionate community that has grown around the game has met the world to us however while many qualities of the experience resonated with players we also recognized that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended therefore at this time we have decided to take the game off offline beginning September 6th 2024 and explore options including those that will better reach our players while we determine the best path ahead Concord sales will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all Gamers who have purchased the game for PC or PS5 if you purchase the game for PlayStation 5 from PlayStation store or Playstation direct a refund will be issued back to your original payment method we'll keep you updated and thank you again to all the free Gunners who have joined us in the Concord Galaxy and that was uh that was pretty much this game had a full-on road map already outlining season 1 and two they were going to add new characters to play new maps quality of life updates and we are never going to see this this game did not even make it to season one an absolute waste of both time and money now PlayStation players were not going to let this stop them from getting the platinum trophy especially for a rare game that won't exist anymore so they started queuing a for games and throwing themselves off the maps as quickly as possible to end the games as quickly as possible so that they can Rec to a different game and get all the achievements quickly but guys why did this happen why did the game just stop Why this game failed, explained in 2 weeks I mean the gamepl looks fun I'll admit it it does it looks fluid it looks cool I thought gamers only cared about gameplay how come this just flopped as hard as it did the developers were absolutely convinced that one of the main appeals of their game was going to be the characters everything from their interactions their dialogue the way they look the way they act so I I really wonder what went wrong here I really wonder why the game flopped look I can sit here for hours and tell you why this game has zero art Direction how some of the most fundamental principles of art weren't even applied here but I won't because all you realistic Ally need to do in this situation is ask yourself this question is an animator with a patreon going to spend a 100 hours animating these two characters scissoring yes or no come on come on just answer the question it's a no right come on it's a no obviously that's why the game failed that's why the game failed okay okay on a serious note look Adventure from OverWatch this is a character who is not conventionally attractive in any way but that doesn't matter because you can clearly see a fundamental aspect of art on her at all times and that's called storytelling everything from her gear to her outfit to her messy hair to her piercings to her broken tooth everything tells me that there's a story behind this character there's depth this is one of the first things you are taught in art Now give me one character in Concord that has this that has storytelling actually let me save you the trouble you can't you just have ugly generic characters wearing ugly generic armor yapping ugly generic dialogue yes gameplay is absolutely King but I think this is one of the unique cases where the art Direction and Aesthetics of this game were so ugly that they actually undermined the gaml play just because of how bad it was to look at it's actually impressive in a really bad way of course that was simply the cold hard truth but don't worry because the circus was only getting started and this time it wasn't just the developers it The president of Sony is TONEDEAF was Sony itself here's what the president and COO of Sony had to say while this was all going on in a financial times inter interview whether it's for games films or anime we don't have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning can you believe that can you just take a second take a step back can you believe that this person right here said exactly what I wanted to say in 14 seconds yikes after that conord oopsie we clearly don't have enough IP also Sony all right let's see oh my God Infamous uh Kill Zone oh my God resistance Socom Twisted Metal Uncharted dude $100 million could have done so much here CEOs at Sony wondering what the hell do Gamers want after their massive $300 million Concord flop how can Sony be saved and the elephant in the room is bloodborne remastered bro oh my God not only just remastered release this on PC you'll make more money than you've ever made developing Concord you idiots this is especially frustrating to everyone because in the beginning of this year of 2024 Sony laid off 900 PlayStation employees 8% of its headcount they impacted Studios like Insomniac Games Naughty Dog Gorilla Games and even fir Sprite a smaller studio and it's like why like while you were working on Concord this is what you were funding this is what you were worried about while you laid off people from every single one of these Studios and what's even more ridiculous right now is that as they were taking down the servers of Concord a new PlayStation exclusive came out by the name of astrobot developed by the remnants of a studio Sony had shut down which was called Japan Studio this is a game developed in 3 years by 65 developers it's a platformer it's a very very simple game but guys look at these reviews dude you would think this is like a new game from Sucker Punch or Gorilla Games or whatever right or Insomniac look at these reviews 93 on Metacritic this is their best rated game of the entire year it is now being praised by everyone I think that Concord coming out just recently made people appreciate it way more than they would have so hey kudos to them that's great because Concord failed massively let's talk specific numbers so as I mentioned thanks to the lead character designer of Concord we now know that the game had taken 8 years How much did Concord sell on PS5...? to develop but here's the thing not only did Concord Peak at barely 600 players on Steam but also on PlayStation the main console was meant to come out for and the console with barely any games to play industry analysts estimate that it had sold around 25,000 units this means $1 million now look $1 million is not a small amount of money but seeing that the game cost around 9 figures so we're talking $100 million minimum we don't have the exact figure here but 8 years of development costs in a studio based in Seattle so Washington State one of the most expensive states in the United States yeah costs are going to add up like crazy as far as I know there has never been an instance where a game flopped so hard compared to its budget in the entire history of video games like ever it is so shockingly embarrassing it's hard to believe and This is also embarrassing for Amazon the embarrassment doesn't end here you might have heard of the show called love death and robots that's available on Netflix it's either 3D animated or 2D animated you know the art styles do differ but each episode contains its own story they're completely independent of each other and it was a massive success so Amazon had hired the people behind this show to make something for them with that same style you know a different episode with a different story every time based on video games so they have like one episode for Pac-Man one episode for God of War Etc and one of those episodes was going to be about Concord and the game didn't even make it far enough for the show to come out it's coming out in December and here are all the games that are going to be featured including Concord and you have to understand this is probably going to be a full 3d CGI episode and those are not cheap to make regardless though Amazon was reached out to to ask if this episode is staying in there and they said yes it is and I mean they have to it costs so much money it's probably done by now but I mean it's just so embarrassing and honestly I doubt the fact that if I were to watch it it would change my opinion on the game it's probably going to be very cheesy very generic and again I don't think I'm going to find one character I'm going to like in there but now what happens 8 What the hell is Sony gonna do now? years over $100 million down the drain what are they going to do well they're going to start reworking some things not enough to change everyone's minds but maybe enough to relaunch as a free-to-play game or they just get a big fat tax write off over the fact that this game generated only a million dollar in Revenue similarly to how Warner Brothers shelved coyote versus Acme to get a $30 million tax right off as far as I know this same thing can be done here look I'm not really worried about Sony the real people going through it right now are the people who worked Concord devs are very likeable part II on this game there's a senior concept artist by the name of Amanda kefir who on her now privated Twitter account expressed this the character concept art team including myself is going through an extremely difficult time emotionally and some on the team no longer want to work in games design characters or even do art anymore after this because of this posts like yours though understandable are unfortunately ill timed none of us know which way the wind will blow with the studio we are worried sick and terrified of the future not only that but we have been shouldering the brunt of the emotional labor as executive directors Dodge most of the blame behind the scenes of all this talk about Concord and character designs people's livelihoods are at risk and there are very real Financial consequences that might hurt us even more now look I would feel sorry for her but after comments like these I don't this is her saying pretty soon these weirdos will have no games to buy at all referencing the people criticizing how the art looks these people have an attitude they hate the people they're making the game for they look at customers like they're beneath them and they think they can get away with whatever they want well flash they can't you worked on this game for God knows how long for years probably you've collected your salary every month during those years first off other than scamming the studio because you clearly don't know what the hell you're doing you now can't complain that because of your bad job you'll be fired I'm sure there are some good people genuine good people in this studio who are getting fired because of the work of others I feel especially bad for anyone who worked in the gameplay Department because the game is fun but for people like Amanda all I have to say is look if working for video games sucks so much if you hate the customer so much go do something else and put the fries in the bag thank you Concord is a lesson that life service games can very rarely Conclusion actually work and if they do there has to be an actual good game behind it as well as the fact that gaming evolves very quickly 8 years ago was a completely different landscape OverWatch had just come out team shooters were everything you'd ever care for but now we're in 2024 things have changed massively you can't take this long to produce a game like this that's following Trends and if you do then you sure as hell better make a good one not this Bland piece of generic trash are Executives going to learn from their lesson here probably not do I think the studio is going to get laid off and probably shut down or something uh yeah probably did we get anything out of this yeah we got to laugh our asses off we got to Hey listen I'm over here enjoying this this is hilarious and I'm sure bad games like this will continue coming out until companies genuinely can't afford to do it anymore but until then I'll still be laughing and I'll probably make another video about it thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed and uh I'll see you in the next video love you [Music] [Music]