Sony Flop Concord Axed Two Weeks After PS5, PC Release

Wow. I didn’t expect it to die THIS quickly.

Sack the execs that greenlit this IMMEDIATELY.

They’re also refunding everyone who bought it. Wow. How many millions lost on this?

Sadly this was inevitable after that launch, this morning it was barely in the top 300 on the PSN store. Now all that remains to be seen is whether it's given another go as f2p or be scrapped altogether.

At least the refund bill will be relatively cheap

Incredible, we're watching gaming history as it happens. E.T. ain't nothing compared to this one.

Game no one asked for, in a genre everyone is sick of, with characters no one likes. It was always going to fail, but this badly? I'm at a loss for words.

lmao

Everyone who bought this deserves a refund immediately.

What a mess.

Literally the fastest I’ve seen a game taken down. Even Hyenas had some time between its pre release beta and its release. It’s insane how literally everyone saw this coming from the very first moment of its official trailer. I hope the people at Firewalk are secure and they aren’t on the chopping block.

At least it will give certain people some weird sense of satisfaction, so there is that.

Shouldn't laugh....but I will

Must be a pain if you bought it physical

so concord is the borderland movie debacle
it took sony 10 days to take the game down that has taken 8 years to make.
i guess those 8 years were multiple cancellations.

Don't they have like ten of these kinda games in the pipeline? Going to be interesting moving forward.

Ouch. A big ol' swing and a miss. I hope they figure out where to go from here.

This is literally unheard of, the worst a game has EVER bombed.

I think it was a good decision to refund everyone but I really don’t know how they can salvage this.

@Cherip-the-Ripper You mean, also a physical pain?

wait ign said it was awsome what about the woke call me the proffesor. hope das keeps das job

Marathon and fairgame$ will be next.

I'm guessing they'll relaunch it as F2P.

@StylesT no laugh needed.
now we know why they had to increase psplus twice in the past year.
they knew concord was going to fail.

Sony, Sony, Sony. Greed has driven you too far from the path that made you.

Course correction is greatly needed.

Can't help but feel bad for the developers. This is the first every live service title from Sony to be shut down this quickly, and literally before they would even air a Secret Level episode of Concord. I can only hope this could teach Sony a lesson about their focus on live service titles, but I also hope the developers will work on something better. Honestly, there's still a small chance for Concord to make a comeback if they turn the game into something we all wanted instead of another overpriced pvp shooter.

Helldivers 2 was a great success. The first and only success for Big Jimbo‘s Live Service strategy?

Amount of people taking satisfaction in this is sad

Wow.....this might have fully replaced E.T., Diakatana, and anything else I can think of as the greatest disaster in gaming history.

This makes Suicide Squad and Skull and Bones look good.

This makes Vita and PSVR2 look good.

This makes WiiU and Saturn look good.

Heck, even Virtual Boy and 32X were on the shelves for a few months at least.......

I bought my PS5 just to play this so now I will sell it

Now please no more life service. We should pour a drink on the hope of the end of this travesty called multi-player games with no story at least from sony' side

Absolutely insane that Sony have dropped the ball so hard with this, tlou and bungie 🤯

State of Play.

Honestly, expected it to last for 6 months before being taken offline and adapted to F2P, as that was a semi-established model for live service game failures.. but this is something completely new. I hope they bury returned copies into desert and make a documentary out of it.

@KundaliniRising333 @JB_Whiting they should just buy the wukong studio to make a ape escape game.

not even free2play would get that game to play more then 700 players.

Got. Damm.

This is absurd levels of failure.

Factions and Twisted Metal died for this.

Not to be mean but I hope the game doesn't come back and they give firewalk factions to revive. Also the physical edition might be a good pick up. Might be worth something.

I have swayed between wishing the game and the studio well to vocably chastising the game studio and everyone involved for ***** up and being a 200-man company it is INCREDIBLY expensive to have the staff on payroll for 1-8 years without ANY cash coming back the other way. It is VERY hard to find any sympathy when I've been against it through and through.

Least of all I feel sorry for all the armchair analysts in here who habe disagreed with me wanting none of these games for SONY as it closes doors on opportunities elsewhere. How wrong you have been - how right I was.

That’s crazy how fast it’s died. Look at how long Avengers lasted!

Well one positive is that playstation might think twice about trying to charge for a game that clearly should have been free to play in the future

Live service? More like dead service!

...I'll see myself out

@Anguspuss ign never said it was awesome. Nearly Every outlet said it was generic drivel with good shooting mechanics that could be fun had the game and asset design not been so subpar and late to the trend chasing.

You and many only say these things because it feeds a false narrative of an agenda that has been completely made up to influence the ignorant politically and fan the flames of hate speech that permeates those lulled into its lies.

That being said it's no denying that this is literally the biggest flop in gaming history

im guessing the studio is gone as well

@Deoxyr1bose they're secure from execution? Sure. But I doubt any dev there will get any other job at Sony. I mean imagine your career when you spent years working on a game that every HR will laugh at when they see it on your CV.

@KundaliniRising333 they gave it a 7 wtf

This is historic, can’t wait to read a good post-mortem on what happened here. Sony really fumbled with this one.

Wow. This is really is the biggest failure in video game history

Wow. That's unprecedented isn't it? They've really got to look at why the game failed in the most spectacular fashion I've ever seen for a game that is NOT broken, unfinished or unplayable.

This game failed because people did not want I play it, they hated the characters, and the publisher needs to be able to accept harsh realities when getting to the root of the problem and not make excuses or blame those who criticised it for whatever reason.

The game failing to sell has nothing to do with criticism or external influences. A product was made that the public immediatley declined in the most devastating way; with their wallets.

@JB_Whiting That’d be the logic step forward but it won’t be enough, the brand ‘Concord’ is already stained, the game itself with its characters is unappealing compared to basically every other hero shooter, they have to make BIG changes and not only F2P.

Man it didn't even last 2 weeks F me what an embarrassment 😅

The 10 people who bought the game can finally be refunded.

With all seriousness, it's better this way and let this be a lesson to Sony for pushing through their live service games. Not saying all of them are bad but there are definitely better ways to handle such games

@DonJorginho
Yes of course, Sony wants quality and if a game doesn't deliver they are done with it very quickly. I say put it on ps plus for free and give it good updates. Stop that live service crap and make real games Hermen. I grew up with Playstation but this is far below par. Playstation for the Players... make sure it's happening.

I didn’t buy it but what happens IF someone bought it on disc. So glad I didn’t buy it

Let us also remember that THIS is what tone-deaf out-of-touch Sony, under Hulst now, thought should be the main keynote occupying the majority of their "E3"/"June event". This was the center of PS5's identity according to Hulst.

Haha I love how Sony turned the comments off the blog post.

Only reason they are taking it down is it's going to be F2P, but they have to rework to game to try and squeeze some monetization out of it.

Reuse the IP as something else entirely as no one wanted this, free or otherwise. Use meta jokes to mock the original release. See how the reception of the inclusion in that amazon show goes, build something more organic from the ground up where maybe people will discover it through other means and then maybe there will be a demand for something based on the IP. All much better than releasing something that had zero demand from the get-go.

It would be salvageable with the right minds behind it. But not the actual game, just the IP. It's a long shot, but Sony has plenty of talented people tucked away.

Failing that... it can be a tax write off, oh yes. They are always fun. Lovely stuff.

Shame for the devs. Nobody wants to see their work end up like this (be it gaming or whatever)

But I think it’s the right thing to do.

Hopefully the refunds come through quickly.

@Anguspuss a 7 is not Awesome, and this site gave it the same. Believe me I think live service games are trash, however this whole narrative that you are really pushing is political and you know it

@KundaliniRising333 it's the exact time of game that if it came out in 2016, it would be called an Overwatch clone. The fact it only started development in 2016 is even worse. Way too late for a viable release when most other clones have died (and Overwatch itself died to be replaced with an inferior version).

@NEStalgia

Are you serious? He can't be that much out of touch with the customers!?

Hope FairGame$ is next on the chopping block.

If it weren't for The Day Before, this would've been the fastest a live-service game has died.

However I am curious about the "explore options" part. Are they considering pulling a Multiversus move and re-release it when it's more fully complete with some drastic changes here and there? Or do they mean just finding what other games they can make that won't suffer the same fate as Concord?

Either way, I do really feel bad for the devs, hope they can bounce back from this, and hopefully this convices the higher-ups at Sony that making live-service games nowadays is way too risky, especially coming from a company that is already more dedicated on making single-player games anyways.

@Artois2 agreed. The artists and devs are real people. This is a cumulative effort from many. I know if I'd worked on this and seen it crash this hard, I'd be utterly broken, so yeah, they have my sympathy as opposed to contempt

@KundaliniRising333 i dont know you you dont know me . im swiss and all this trump bad etc guess what in switzerland to become swiss theres a trick question who the president is why know one knows or cares. hopp suisse

At least Sony is fair and is refunding people. Not like the Kotor2 scam for example. I’m pretty sure it’s not a 100% loss for Sony. At least they have an engine, some knowledge how to put a server for multiplayer, etc.., tech people will probably be reused elsewhere. On the artistic side, however, yeah it was not a good job.

@Anguspuss fair enough. Wish you well

@KundaliniRising333 you too. and the people that did the cut scenes i hope they get snapped up as they looked awsome

Well damn!! I expected Concord would soon be given to all PS Plus subscribers and then made completely free to play before the end of the year, in an attempt to scrounge up some kind of player base. But Christ, shut down within a few weeks after launch? That's wild.

This was just, not what people want from Sony. People have been pushing back against their new focus on live service games since it was announced. Honestly, if Concord had been announced and released outside of that, and been free-to-play, it probably would have done better. Not necessarily a hit, but more than the disaster it is now. There was a tone deafness to this whole thing, and hopefully Sony learned something here.

Wow 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱 Stunned, amazed

@Cherip-the-Ripper No they have a collector's item with historic value.

@awp69 Rumour has it that the refund total comes to about 427 quid.

@EfYI One would think. Yet this was the big opening and took up nearly half of the entire June event. Only astrobot as the "one more thing" took another spotlight and that spotlight was smaller than the one shown on this. He really is that out of touch.

At least they are refunding.

Not sure if it's encouraging that they were willing to cut the loses so early and move on or if I'm concerned at the lack of any attempt to save it. What does this mean for the next Sony live service game? I will be very hesitant to jump into the next one if the chance of them killing it is looming even in the launch weeks.

The odds of the studio shutting down has to be higher than the odds that they revive this or are granted a new project.

They will come back stronger and with even more pronouns!

Didn't even last a month

This is absolutely embarrassing.

@EfYI lol. Who are you, the second coming?

Wow. Who knew. Didn’t even bother with CPR.
Great advert for the £700 Pro. What first party games we getting with that sound investment? Concord reanimated. DOA.

Probably start with refunding the 25000 people who bought it.

Annnnnnd it's gone.

Wow, that's. . I've seen live service games die before, but this is unprecedented. What a disaster.

This makes Dreams, Foam Stars and Destruction All Stars look like successes

What a catastrophic failure
Hundreds of millions down the drain (from studio purchase + development cost)

Just came here to say what everyone else is saying: Wow.

This is like "Lord of Ring, Gollum" levels of failure.

Unfortunate for the dev that 8 years of development time leads to this nonsense.

Whilst I feel sorry for the devs that had to work on this, it's probably the best thing that could have possibly happened for the industry and gaming in general.

Publishers will think twice about designing cynical cash grabs by committee going forward. It'll be especially satisfying to see Astro Bot smash it this weekend.

Maybe unrelated to ps5 pro but after some serious software and hardware flops (psvr2) there is not a lot of goodwill left to sell the damn thing.

It will end up being f2p that what going to happen

@NEStalgia What a mess. I'd like to think Sony and other publishers will learn from this, but probably not.

Obviously they're going to try and somehow make this free to play. I also imagine the cinematics arnt going to happen.

The bigger problem is that a lot of people also hated the way the characters looked and i don't see how they are going to change that without re-doing the whole game.

@The_Elder hey! How do you know they are a they? 😆👍

"Explores options" LMAO.

The studio was given them and feedback all the way till launch but they chose to ignore all.

Focus on creating good and/or attractive characters and the gameplay instead of pushing agendas.

@Old-Red I don't see how this counts as a cash grab. They spent around 8 years making it. They charge far more for remakes of old games.

It's not like the game was barebones and bad all around. They put a lot of effort into it. It just wasn't enough.

@puddinggirl oh noes. Not the evil agendas that sank Baldur's Gate 3.

Wow. 8 years to make to last 2 weeks on the market. 😮

Best schadenfreude moment of the day.

Suicide Squad and now Concord. Are they listening the market on live service now?

@get2sammyb yeah I would have thought they would have at least waited a month

What about my platinum trophy? I really need to grind now.

@zebric21 PSVR2 still functions. Still has games coming to it. Had a nice sales bump last month. Not a high bar to jump over, but it's on the floor. This whole thing is astonishing. I've said before that Sony dropping support for PSVR2 would imply there's a plan or strategy, which they don't have. I didn't know how right I was. At least there's some decisive action here and they cut their losses.

I usually like the Jason Schreier post mortems on these things but I can't help but think this one will be the least interesting. The game works as intended. That intent was just way off base. But we've all known it was off base this entire time so what is there to say? Nothing that we won't be also saying about Fairgame$ next year.

@puddinggirl Yes, this game flopped due to "wokeness". Seriously? The game flopped because it's outdated and nobody wanted it. I would be shocked if this game resurfaces. Likely, it will be shelved and turned into a tax write off. Sony waited way too long to reveal the game and once it was shown, it was too late to pivot when people demonstrated that it was unwanted.

@get2sammyb i thought they would have given it free ps plus gamers as suprise bonus get people playing

@Shepherd_Tallon I been saying the same thing. Factions would actually be really successful. I didn't like the story of tlou part 2, but that game play was great.

@Americansamurai1 waaay ahead of you.... put one on order yesterday... definitely gonna be a £30 curio until someone can / or wants to do something with it, but worth a punt!

Here’s a question for everyone.

How will trophy hunters be affected by this?With refunds issued and access being removed soon, will those who invested in the game be permanently locked out of being able to 100% + Platinum the Concord trophy list? This is precisely why I avoid online-only games like the plague. If the game is fundamentally altered, the existing trophies may be permanently unobtainable.

Without any industry wide standard as to what is acceptable trophy/achievement criteria and what is not, nor having the ability to permanently erase games with partially completed trophies from our lists, this is a very real issue. I, for one, have no interest in seeing a game sitting at 42%, 65%, 98% etc on my trophy list and the specific nature of a game’s trophies is a large influence on whether or not I decide to purchase or skip it entirely. There is no reason platform holders cannot or should not cater to trophy and achievement hunters, who are realistically the only people who actually care about trophies/achievements in the first place.

This was the most effective way to send a message, hitting Sony right in the pocketbook.

The biggest gaming industry failure ever. How many hundreds of millions wasted, they even purchased the whole studio. Hulst is in big trouble

An unprecedented first party flop. That’s actually insane. Good luck to whoever has to rebrand Concord when it re-emerges.

I literally laughed out loud, like holy sh#t, it's hilarious.

Redesign the characters, get rid of the useless pronouns and make some tweaks to improve the game then throw it on PSN and maybe change the name to FreeGunners or something.

Or better yet, if they can still use it as a tax write off somehow then just do that.

I just remembered there will be a whole episode of Amazon's Secret Level based around Concord in December. The game won't even exist at that point anymore and Sony paid for that episode to be made. God damn that is going to sting for Sony.

@Balaam_
On the flip side, how tantalizing must it be to have such a rare plat? It's definitely a gamble...

And Astro Bot will sell buckets. Are you getting the message, Sony? Can the people in the back (Hulst and the clueless investors) hear us yet?

@theSpectre There's not such thing as outdated games but only unattractive and boring games.

Many people are playing classic games made in the 90s and we have a sub tier in PS+ just for this...

@naruball they went round thinking "the kids like this don't they?" stealing left right and centre in the hope they'd make a gross ass cash cow. If that's not cynical and devoid of any creativity I don't know what is. Just cause it took them 8 years to do it makes no difference. If anything it makes it worse.

That Concord episode of Secret Level is gonna feel rather bizarre now...

The community predicted well in advance, just not this soon. No one wanted the game, no one was hyped about the game, no one barely played the beta, no one wanted to pay for it, and no one cared when it launched. There were signs this was going to happen before it happened.

I got the Platinum for the game today and I did enjoy my time mostly.

It's pretty crazy situation though. I'll happily take my refund

Now, focus on the non-live service games you’ve spent decades perfecting Sony for f***** sake.

This is actually nuts! To not even try to keep it going. Literally no one must be playing it.

This is why shooters need some kind of offline mode, honestly. It’s a gamble as a player to buy a multiplayer only game because you’re counting on other people playing it, otherwise it’s a useless product.

@The_Elder world should switch german as they them is formal way address someone non binary is well das what we use for little girls. guess what we dont have this issue

@get2sammyb Definitely what I think, Sony will want to bury this in back of their chamber of secrets and hope it’s forgotten about

@LordFunkalot not with that episode of Secret Level coming up all about Concord. Unless they convince Amazon to scrap that episode entirely it will be an everlasting reminder of their failure

I'm dreaming of a world that people will also do this with other products as well and vote with their money or protest in any possible way. Food and energy price inflation,monopolistic and mob controlled markets etc.

So...

Who's ready for Fairgames?

Well we would have not had this trouble with
Uncharted 5. A New Legacy.
Starring drakes daughter.
Just lots of happy PlayStation gamers
Millions sold and maybe more consoles.
A big AAA game, critical acclaimed.
And brand momentum.

Let that be a lesson to you Sony.

Prices on sealed copies are listed above the original $40 price tag on Amazon. One seller is listing their 15 copies for $75 each. I guess I'm not the only one who saw a potential collectors item. I will hold out hope for best buy or target to clearance at $10- $20.

@Frmknst Way more than that. I work in that industry and the amount of power and money it takes to run these servers is huge. It isn't like they can just add or remove servers to accommodate a playerbase as it is based on software limitations. It would be the same amount of servers for 10 players or 1,000,000. The servers would cost tens of thousands per month to keep online, especially if Sony was renting them out from a realtor which is a common practice for even major businesses.

If I was on this dev team I’d be filling out applications right now. Layoffs always start from the bottom in situations like this.

@PocketHotDogs so the few people who played it were imaginary?

@IOI by buldozer...

Perfect time to shutter the game too.

Within a day Sony hope everyone will be talking about Astrobot, and they probably will be!

Wump wump wump

@PloverNutter Lol I forget about that, I love stuff like this. It’ll be a gaming oddity many years from now and we can all think back and remember

@Old-Red Even if all that were true (which is not), it'd still not be a cash grab. Not by a long shot.

A remaster that is almost identical to the original game, with the same issues, no effort made, costing as much as a new game would be a better example of a cash grab.

Now sony focus on single player game .word up son

@BacklogBrad Collector items have value if they are working. Without server you can use it just as drink glass pad.

Chasing the live service money train is mad when there are already insanely popular (and free) live service games that people have invested in heavily for years. No one is going to abandon games like Fortnite for the new kid on the block. Especially when these new games never last more than a few months. People have realised it’s a bad investment.

The big name live service games have already dominated the market. There isn’t space for any more. And them not being F2P at launch means they’re DOA.

You can’t ask players to pay full price for the game and then expect them to spend hundreds on cosmetics. It’s like they want to have their cake and eat it too. Pure greed and delusion.

Thanks a lot all you sickos. This is exactly what I said before if yall with all your hate shut this game down I would hate all of yall for it. What am I supposed to play now. I was genuinely having fun.

@Ryne-Gaia Any other game in existence? There’s lots of them. I’m glad you and the 800+ others who enjoyed it got some value out of it, and you’ll get your money back while remembering the fun. I’d call that a win for you.

Hopefully this shows sony the community want single player games and not this live service crap.

@djlard there are dolls and all sorts of things that are collector items. They don't have to work.

Only 1285 got the first trophy.

97% of players have earned it.

It is awarded for your first kill.

Meaning that at best, only about 1300 people played this game.

Lol!! What a disaster.

@Ryne-Gaia another game?

@Amin1998 absolutely, hence why Helldivers II is Sony's fastest selling game.
Also, why single games like Tearaway, Sackboy, Puppeteer, Concrete Genie sold so bad.

@dskatter fair enough mate my apologies for my anger. I just hate that all these no life haters all won and are gonna get to celebrate all day.

@Slideaway1983 another new game? Like what?

I'm really tempted to quickly get a physical copy right now.

You know, just for collector's sake.

And in twenty years, I'll sell it on Ebay and will be able to buy a new house.

The sad part is they haven't learned the lesson. They will F2P the game and it will fail again. There will be some streamers that will play it and claim it's good just so they can pretend to be the good guys. It will all be fake just for content. Nothing can fix the terrible art design, characters design or the fact it's just a cheap ripoff of Overwatch trying to cash in. Hopefully Sony will just right it off as a failure and move on. There does need to be some people fired but they most likely be the poor devs forced to work on this to make a living. No executives will be removed.

Apparently Hermen has arranged a landfill site already, an undisclosed location possibly in New Mexico.
Let the hunt begin.

Hahaaaaa great news!!
Let's hope this sends a signal to Sony - and any other original single player developers - that people do NOT. WANT. LIVE SERVICE GAMES.

Really good to see this game flopping so hard.

Literally just made an account just to comment on this historic mess that is Concord👀
Like many have said this game was always doomed from the start and for whatever reason Sony was in deep denial about what was going to occur😵‍💫
Will definitely be looking forward to the many YouTubers that will make documentaries about this eventually 🙃

If it doesn't come back f2p with heckin cute girls in swimsuit cosmetics with jiggle physics, it's gonna flop again!

@naruball "A remaster that is almost identical to the original game, with the same issues, no effort made, costing as much as a new game would be a better example of a cash grab."

You seem to be missing my point whilst also attempting to be pedantic. That's exactly what I'm accusing this of being. Except they didn't have anything to do with the original source material they pinched all their ideas from.

@Shepherd_Tallon definitely plus it's a popular franchise with a hit tv series so it can gather a huge player base.

Do someone remember those Concord airplanes? And how they ended?

The best idea is to scrap it all and forget all future of Concord. Any try would be only entertainment for crowds. Just record it to history "how chasing money went bad".

@Can-You-Believe-Sith It's kind of funny really. The only people who are going to be quids in from all of this are the Youtube reviewers.

Hulst needs to be fired his tenure as head of PS Studios has been an utter disaster

@Keyblade-Dan Rather Jim Ryan should get bill to pay all of this.... it was his idea to push GaaSes.

Nothing new to add, just kind of blown away that a game that never seemed “broken” or “unplayable” is having the purchase price refunded. Though I suppose a game that requires 10 people online at all times is kind of unplayable but I think bots could have gotten around that.

Anyway remember this, all of you happy this failed thinking it’s the end of “live service” games, it may be the end of paid live service games, but it probably means more free to play games littered with micro transactions. Be careful what you wish for.🤑

Can we please get away from this failed Live Service/Gacha era
And bring back fully paid games that has everything it has to offer as non-paid unlockables again?

@Ryne-Gaia anything you want. I'm not your mom, I won't tell you what you can or can't play 🤣

@UnlimitedSevens We really don't know about astrobot sales. The hype is there but people sometimes don't open their wallets to good things.

Oooooooffffffff
Ouch.
Hisss…
Guffaw….

That’s rough, guys. This was a hard sell even for folks who like these online shooters.
:: goes back to waiting for silent hill 2 ::

But I bought the physical version from an online retailer 😔.

Although, if the game never comes back then maybe my copy will be worth some money in future.

OK its finally over, seems like this game has been out forever 😂 now Sony, ditch this fairgames marathon crap, very few people want these. Please announce Bloodborne 2 and GoT 2 and you will save your stock price 😂

Lesson learned. Don’t ask kids to pay for things up front. They don’t like it. Just hit them with Microtransactions and battle passes later. Oh, and try to get influencers onboard. Marketing, not quality, is key.

To the surprise of no one ..

@Old-Red sure, buddy.

This is the single biggest failure in modern gaming history.

@rjejr They are refunding the game only because they are shutting the game down within the first month. People could make fraud claims on their credit cards within this timeframe. If the costs to run the servers for a couple more weeks wasn't more than the amount of money made from the sales they would have waited until October and not offered refunds

@Maubari If they do "NOT. WANT. LIVE SERVICE GAMES", who bought Helldivers II?

@SleeplessKnight not even just modern. An argument can be made this is the new ET of gaming.

@Splat They cancelled Factions, Twisted Metal and the London Studio game.

@Max_the_German GT7 and MLB The Show count I think.

@thefourfoldroot1 well said. If the influencers can scream at the camera, even better.

I respect Sony for handing out refunds at least. Hopefully the studio doesn't close from this.

@Blaze215 Fairgames might flop but Marathon will be a hit as Bunjie have a good track record in terms of quality and will also be multi platform.

@naruball I never stated that no one actually played it. I know there were dozens of players. DOZENS! I just think you can't force a live service game to work if the demand and player base isn't there and lets face it, it wasn't for this game.

@naruball He obviously doesn't know that there's more gamers playing live service games as there are playing single player games.

@naruball You can play Helldivers 2 also single player, don't you?

Imagine Microsoft've done this a week after Redfall release. Everyone would be talking how MS is anticonsumer, Xbox is dead, oo:, oo:, and more oo:, but nobody here is saying how ***** up Sony is.

@naruball

Haha funny that you bring up the ONE that was succesfull.. and don't even mention how many have flopped so far.

• Skull and Bones
• Suicide Squad
• Foamstars

and now Concord too. Next time before you try to act smart.. try and read up a little bit first, hmm?

@djlard

Nah multiplayer only unfortunately.

The first one had single player though.

I think the game will come back as free to play, and will include MTX in the form of cosmetics and battle passes. That will most likely attract more negativity, basically no matter what they do they can't win.

The people voted with their wallets and won.

@zebric21

Right you are. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I think a far better way to build an audience for a multiplayer only game is to use an existing IP and making a spin off. The way that The Last of Us planned to be.

Otherwise, it's like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

@Maubari Basically if it's a paid live service game then it's chances of flopping are very high, as in that same time frame there's been some successful live service games but they have been free to play, like Palworld, The Finals, Once Human, First Descendant and Honkai Star Rail.

HellDivers 2 was a rare occurrence, but the only reason is because it was unique and no other game on the market is like it.

@UltimateOtaku91 Hmm I don't know, Bungie haven't exactly been killing it lately. I mean multiplatform isn't exactly that much of a boost, you're just including Xbox as an extra platform there really

Damn, 205 comments already... what is the record for most comments a PushSquare article ever got?

I hope PlayStation Support offers to delete this thing trophies and activity from profiles of users who ask for.

Just let it die. This game will never be a success at this point even as a FtP title.

@NEStalgia HAHA i did say DOA but even i though it would last 6 weeks. It is completely off PSN right now. I tried for search for it and it’s gone. Now thats a Jimbo special if i ever seen one. LOL

As I said elsewhere, the ramifications of these losses will be huge. It won't just be concord / firewalk affected, but Playstation's whole business for years to come. You can't just write off losses like this. And with Marathon and Fairgame$ to come, and the disaster that has been the bungie aquisition? It doesn't look good.

This whole live service experiment appears to have been jumped into two footed without feeling the pulse of the gaming community. It's possible that concord DID look unique when it was first shown to Sony - but an 8 year dev cycle is just far too long and new, fresh ideas will have overtaken it, and those games that got to market first have established strong player bases which are unlikely to jump into another online hero shooter.

I have said since PS5 launched something is not right at Sony. They are not listening to what the community is telling them. More losses to come I'm afraid.

If they think PS5 Pro will be a massive success - particularly in this financial climate - I'm afraid to say that i think they are sorely mistaken. When they are still increasing the price of PS5 around the world (and yet to max out its potential), i don't see many upgrading to a new machine right now.

I really hope Astrobot performs well this week, and Sony get some goodwill back with a strong State of Play in September - because it's looking a little concerning right now.

As for Concord / Firewalk, it is a shame that it has come to this - as others have said, the best thing to do right now might be to resurrect factions and let them work on curating / sustaining an audience for that if they are set to continue as a live service studio. I'm not sure Sony would be able to set them off on a new game right now with another protracted development timeline - but i certainly dont want to be reading an article in a few weeks telling us that the studio has been shuttered and more developers have lost their jobs. Because by all accounts, Concord appears to have been competently put together and launched in a decent state. There are clearly talented developers at the studio and I hope a solution can be found to keep everyone employed

@fbnaulin i have wished for a feature that would allow users to delete games off their profiles permanently. Take back the one or max 2 bronze trophies i got. I could care less. I just don’t want stuff on there i tried and didn’t like, but they gave me a bronze for finishing the tutorial.

@djlard I would gladly find a spot for a sealed copy of concord on the shelf if I can find a clearance deal of $10ish.

There is a novelty to having it but also we don't really know how this one will age price wise. On the one hand it will likely be unplayable. But there are also reportedly only 25k sold and that estimate includes digital so it's potentialy extremely rare and it is a 1st party Sony game which playstation collectors like to have the "complete" set.

@theSpectre @puddinggirl yeah, the whole "Concord failed because of pronouns" thing a lot of people - from your bog standard gamers to some fairly big YouTubers - have latched onto is utter *****. I have unsubscribed to a fair few people on YouTube since Concord came out, because I was sick of seeing the words "woke" and "pronouns" in video titles and thumbnails. People who are "anti-woke" and complain about pronouns are garbage human beings.

@Perturbator There's probably more comments here than Concord's active player base at this point.

@PocketHotDogs Take out the “probably” and your statement would still likely be accurate!

I honestly thought Sony was going to put this in PS+ and port it too Xbox and make it a pack in game for PS5 & PS5 PRO.

Well done on refunding everyone.

We'll be watching documentaries about this game soon.

@KundaliniRising333 the game is a 0 and this site gave ghost recon wildlands a 7 despite that game being superior to this and a great game.

@PocketHotDogs Haha you're probably right

@dskatter At this rate, you're "probably" right lol

I'm always happy when I see a GAAS failing

Now stop with this ***** and give me more high quality singleplayer games, Sony.

@theSpectre nah it flopped because the characters were trash nobody wants to play as the knock off guardians of the galaxy and a guy who looks like urkel, dr robotnik and an indian guy had their dna spliced together to make a clone.

Daaaaayyyuuummm!!!! Gotta be painful for all involved! This is embarrassing!

@Vault_Mcfly why can’t they do both? In fact, they have been!

I say we take off and nuke the game from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

Man, not even a week left. Trophy hunters are screwed considering how insane the grind for the platinum sounded, my condolences.

The game is bringing everyone together in discussion, even if it failed to do so in game play. Those many millions of dollars spent in development and advertising were not completely wasted.

Let this be a good lesson for Sony charging 40 euro for what should have been free to play. It will also make sure that no other publishers try this ever again for a GAAS PVP only title going forward.

Also: such this must hurt very very very hard for the devs.

This is like a first ever that a AAA title get pulled after a week and a half.

They also had a special controller for this (the only one never to sell out before a games release) and an episode in ‘Secret Level’, that animation series of the makers of Love, Death, Robots between episodes of giants like God Of War, Warhammer etc.

@CielloArc We hoping for Helldivers 2 as well then? We don't need to lump games into the same bin.

Remember that the GaaS initiative for Sony was to increase income to produce more in house single player games at PlayStation for the future. This is a huge negative dent into that and who knows might delay or take some single player games from AAA to AA quality.

No one should be rooting for failure.

surprised this article header wasn't "The haters won" XD

@naruball that game is expiring quickly it's got like 10k players max with 1k spread on each planet compared to when it first came out and would consistently have 60k, devs keep buffing enemies and nerfing weapons they'll lose more.

Game is highly overrated anyway, multiple enemies that can one tap you (the jetpack robot flying at you and exploding when you kill it is amateur hour game design), very repetitive, braindead playerbase and predatory microtransactions (yes they are to anyone claiming getting currency free is good) 8 hours playtime in two weeks to get 100 super credits clearing whole maps is terrible for a game that isn't cheap with the majority of content locked behind this scummy paywall.

@Bobobiwan "I'm really tempted to quickly get a physical copy right now.

You know, just for collector's sake.

And in twenty years, I'll sell it on Ebay and will be able to buy a new house."

...or a replica concord.

@AdamNovice I consider this a huge win. I am not interested in cosmetic stuff so this business model is much better for some people. This game will be a good example so that other publishers don’t try this outdated GAAS business model anymore the coming years.

And sony refund the buyers? I though they will shutdown this maybe 3 to 4 months later and pocket the money. Good guy sony

and i got stick for calling refunds and saying it would be taking offline.

did the controller actually release as wasnt intrested in game but wanted the controller

@Rob_230 There was a small but decent sized minority back in 2020 leading up to PS5 launch among us who said Jim was a disaster waiting to happen, riding the success of PS4, and that we would not see the pending disaster that is Jim's Playstation until several years into PS5, I think I may have even put the year "at least 2024 at the soonest, maybe not until PS6" and people heckled, condescended, and ridiculed "Xbox fanboys" down for saying such things.

I don't think any of us saying that back then imagined a scenario so bad it would involve buying multiple failing studios, launching failing games, including hundreds of millions for a game that lasts a week on shelves and nets $0 revenue. We were unknowingly blindly optimistic about Jim's Playstation.

@Deityjester expiring quickly or not, it still sold 12m copies quite a while ago. That is a huge success no matter what.

Next time Square-Enix complain about sales figures, someone show them Concord.

General population at large: Unprecedented! 👀

Gacha gamers: First time? 🤓

Also me: This Changes Everything!

Jim's legacy will be remembered for this. Factions got cancelled but Concord didn't just think about that.

@Maubari "haha funny" indeed. Read your post again and maybe you'll realize what I was specifically replying to.

If you want move the goalpost to include more games, then sure:

Genshin impact making as much profit as Playstation in an entire year
Fortnight
League of Legends
FFXIV
World of Warcraft
Roblox

and the list goes on.

"Next time before you try to act smart.. try and read up a little bit first, hmm?"

Gotta love the irony. Thanks for the laugh.

@DonJorginho One retired he's called Jim Ryan and he's got his pension for life and a golden handshake

What an utter shame. The weekly cutscenes and the '80s Sci-Fi aesthetic we're cool ideas, just not enough to set it apart. It clearly had issues, but I contend that it received unprecedented and unwarranted hate.

And no that doesn't mean it didn't deserve criticism. I wished it wasn't a hero shooter as well. A few characters stood out, others were bad. Gameplay was tight and polished but there isn't a hook there for most. And while I like the $40 model certainly more than F2P, it was the worst decision for this title.

I hope Firewalk can find some path forward. I'm not sure theres much of anything they can retain from what we could call Concord 1.0 and use in 2.0. Even the name Concord has become a meme, and it might be best to distance from if they indeed turn Concord into something else.

One final thought. I've been with PlayStation all my life, and like many others, prefer single player experiences. But PlayStation can explore both. Helldivers 2 is one of biggest successes in PS history, and offers an experience that cannot be found with PlayStation's typical offerings.

But if Sony continues to commit to this strategy, which I think is fine, they will have to accept it can be like walking a tight rope over a fire.

@EddieGallad what the hell has Xbox got to do with this ??? Please enlighten me on that please.

It killed itself no one wanted it no one asked for it not one PS gamer asked for a game like this. They could have spent the money on a old IP instead revived something else but no Sony decided to waste £300 million if that's to be believed on this rubbish

Not surprised.

Whether it's two weeks or two months, this was doomed from first announcement.

@NEStalgia Got to wonder if it's why Andrew House, and Shawn L decided to leave around that time huh

Man, the Concord episode of Secret Level is gonna be appointment-viewing!

@Nakatomi_Uk the Don Mattrick of PlayStation

Sony's strategy with gaas was so designed to fund 1st party games witch cost has tripled in the last few years, now with this hot potato on their hands and Factions 2 cost witch also lost I hope they have a plan B cause things aint looking well right now!

@zebric21 this is absolutely going to be one of the rarest physical releases in Playstation history. I might get a copy to frame in celebration of the death of live service games.

I know live service is going nowhere in reality, but it feels like there might be a slight shift in a positive direction. It'll be the first and last live service game I invest in. There's something quite poetic in that.

@awp69 Millions won't be lost from refunds, that's for sure lol.

This has to be a big message to Sony to rethink their strategy internally and stop chasing live service crap.

I might be wrong, but something tells me that Sony will still try to make this free to play and try to squeeze as most they can from it later on.

This also serves as an example that we gamers, have the power to make things change voting with the our wallets..

@EddieGallad What??? Where on Earth has this take come from???

I think you should read the room a little more because there doesn't seem to be a single PlayStation fan who was desperate for this game to exist let alone release.

Nobody in their right mind wanted Sony to invest c£300million or 8 years into this.

How you've come to the conclusion that the catastrophic failure of this game has anything to do with Xbox fans is quite frankly laughable.

I'm hoping for your sake this is satire.

I thought I would be clever and buy it for the Playstation Stars points, but sadly I'm too late.

Wasn’t expecting this so fast!

And I thought Anthem set the standard for ultimate game failure.

The controller is a thing of beauty though. Way better than the Astro Bot one IMO.

I desperately hope that Astro Bot succeeds and at the same time shows Sony that live service isn't the answer.

If I’m trying to find Concord on Best Buy, it’s giving me Astro Bot ! Is this just a random glitch or a strategy from Sony? 😊

@Old-Red you can say that about every new game, movie or song they all steal from other sources

What about the 25 people who now can't play?

@lindos I'm a poor, sloppy-seconds TLOU2-survivor if that's what you mean😂 Indulge me, what is 'lindos'?

@naruball

How could you forget Infinity Nikki, I'm fairly disappointed.

Live service for people like you and me is known for content delivery, instead of some stereotypical genre.

My days with live service multiplayer ended with Overwatch and started with that pepega live service SP, Jenshin Impact.

Needless to say, trends are very volatile when the games made today, might probably age like milk, 8 years later.

But hey, one thing that always age like fine wine is the schadenfreude pick-up lines👌
ㅤ

The best call Sony could make. If we assume ~$40 equivalent per copy, and estimates are 25k copies sold across PC and PS5 (which was confirmed as “about right” by Gamesindustry.biz on their podcast, and their Chris Dring said he has seen the numbers) then refunds will cost Sony about $1m.

F2P would have required additional investment in retooling the progression and gameplay modes to suit that business model, and cheesed off early adopters, while every indication from the betas was that it wouldn’t improve anything in terms of player interest.

If I were Firewalk, I’d strip the game back to a grey-box, remove all the art assets, and focus my attention there. A total art overhaul and rebrand is required IMO.

But I suspect they’ll mothball it instead and take the tax write off.

@Deityjester awful character design and price point is essentially what killed this game. Price point more so when 90% of your competition in the same space are ftp.

Good riddance, it was doomed from the first trailer. Then the abysmal beta numbers that had to get opened up to wider audience (initially limited to preorders only) and the embarrassing launch numbers. The character designs are the worst I have seen in a triple A game.

That Secret Level episode is going to be real funny now.

Lol! I would have thought the modern audience would have showed up to support this game. Despite this type of game being in a crowded sphere. I'd say I feel sorry but people willingly worked on this and couldn't read the market.

ROFL! Just as I asserted months ago; no one wanted Concord.

Sony, drop the live service crap and focus on narrative-drivien games with compelling stories.

So if they are refunding not only will this not have made a single cent but it will leave Sony in the red by 100-200 million, so they will try to get that money from somewhere meaning cuts and cancellations of games 😕

@Tecinthebrain it’s still a win though 🤣

Well, it’s nice I’m getting a refund, but this sucks. I’ve really enjoyed Concord.

There’s another loss for traditional games.

People will bitch about this game and then go spend 40$ on 2 costumes in Fortnite.

@Markatron84 What's more is that whining about the pronouns for a cheap political win, ignores the actual problems that this game has. Like do you really care about 2 words in the corner of the screen? Would Breath of the Wild have failed if the character bios included pronouns? Give me a break.

Gonne be an ***** and say that if this ends up with the studio being closed then that's fully deserved. Many people have this defeatist attitude regarding modern games industry and say that things like boycotts and voting with your wallet don't really work. Well, this time it clearly worked. People's livelihoods are at stake yes, but the reality is that voting with your wallet and workplace stability in games industry are almost always mutually exclusive. Can't have your cake and eat it too, I'm rather happy to see that consumers actually do still have power.

HOLY CRAP! I go out for 2 hours and come back to this, absolutely wild! Its the right thing to do, hopefully if there's a way forward it includes some single player campaign content, a character re-design etc but oooof! A hard lesson to learn for everyone involved and that includes Sony, but nobody should be cheering this, have a bit of humanity.

@LazyLombax

The First Descendant was a 3/10, came out before and has already outlived Concord. 😂

@AhmadSumadi Helldivers 2 is almost dead too, I don't think they can do both.

@Zenos confirmation bias at its finest.

@Savage_Joe Wasn't Hulst CEO of Playstation Studios before coming CEO of SIE? So, he was in charge of overseeing studios and approving game development... It is as much his fault as it is Jimbos.

@Wardenknight133 I don’t know if it’s even possible to save this game by pivoting to F2P. It’s narrative is so overwhelmingly negative at this point that good will and interest from the audience might be impossible to gain.

It’s the Liz Truss of video games. Which is a bit unfair on Liz actually as she lasted a few weeks.

@Markatron84 Why do games need to include pronouns? And why are people who dislike pronouns being forced upon them "garbage"? Surely their opinion is just as valid?

@jrt87 orrrrrrr it'll be the single most valuable trade item when society collapses and physical video games become the main currency.

1 loaf of bread = 2 loose PS1 Destruction Derbies and a CIB Xbox 360 Halo.

@NEStalgia and it says on top of the cover: only on PlayStation! which is true

Maybe naming it after a decommissioned plane wasn’t a good omen to start with.

Man, this comments section really took off!

@__jamiie they don't "need to". They chose to include them. We use pronouns all the time. When we say "I know him", "him" is a pronoun, so nothing is "forced upon" anyone.

Also, not all opinions are valid. If a group of people went on and on how they hate female characters with red hair, as if red hair was such a terrible thing, then yes you'd have every right to consider them and their opinion/obsession "garbage".

@Ralizah Why should the developers be safe from launching one of the biggest gaming disasters of all time?

@Lup First descendant is kind of the opposite in a way. Dodgy gameplay but "appealing" character designs, if you get me

@naruball I found it odd that Demon Souls has body 1/2 instead of male/female. But it is very easy to just say whatever and move on

@Wallace80 ignorance intensifies.

@Wallace80 yes they do. They is also a pronoun.

@SlipperyFish exactly.

@Nakatomi_Uk House left on his own after getting PS4 up and running, but yeah, Layden, I think we had a pretty clear picture that he was being pushed to the periphery, sandboxed into a made-up role just to get him out of the way, and pushed out for being on the wrong side of Jim's vision. Same with Shu Yoshida who they couldn't quite get rid of from the Japanese home office as easily as Shaun, but they got him "out of the way" by moving him to indies where he'd have no influence anymore.

@Savage_Joe Yeah Hulst has been Jim's mini-me for much of his reign. He was brought up from Guerilla to replace the deposed Shaun Layden as a more suitable fellow traveller for Jim. He's been part of this and the live service push with Jim from the start. As long as he's still there, we still have one foot in the Jimbo era. Though as long as Totoki is closely watching, he may stay in his cage. It wasn't a mistake Totoki appointed himself chairman.

@Wallace80 Unless you speak a language where they don't exist (no idea if this is a thing), you've been using them your entire life.

@naruball yes using pronouns correctly is fine. german they them sie formal addressing someone is also sie. neutral is das also das madchen aka little girl. also in german i introduce my wife i say my woman. she introduces me my man. im also romanian and the pronoun stuff dont work at all. as a example we have two words for each colour whan male one female.

Nearly everybody saw that this game would fail after watching just one minute of its awful SoP trailer three months back. If nobody at Sony could foresee this then PlayStation as a brand is in trouble.

@Wallace80 I have no idea what you're trying to say to me, lol.

Anyway, everyone uses pronouns, friend. YOU have pronouns. Guess even you aren't safe from the woke mind virus.

@rjejr the game was confirmed to have mtx anyway, what you on about 😂

@Golem25 This is the best possible summary of this game's life. No more need be said.

That's wild. Obviously the game wasn't doing well, but I certainly didn't expect them to pull the plug this quick.

@__jamiie If you don't want to list them, don't. I've literally never listed mine nor ever felt pressured to do so, and I've never once been bothered by anyone else listing theirs. It's so utterly harmless, except to people who want to be outraged by something, I guess.

@__jamiie
1. You're not being hurt or inconvenienced in any way by having a character's pronouns visible in the corner of the screen in a character selection screen.
2. People who complain about pronouns are too stupid to realise that they themselves both have and use pronouns every single day.

@UltimateOtaku91 palworld wasn't free to play, you might've gotten it confused cause it launched on gp.

@__jamiie it's not needed, but what exactly is needed? Are revealing outfits needed? Are old characters needed? Are colourful environments needed? They're just choices that each developer makes. Some we like, some we don't, and some we're indifferent towards.

Simple as that.

Concord will still be in the running for IGN’s GOTY 😂

@Anguspuss that's fascinating stuff. I took German ages ago, but didn't get very far, I'm afraid.

@Markatron84 exactly. It really only bothers them so much as they are told to be bothered by those that brainwash them with divisive left/right political nonsense.

That's crazy for a AAA new IP (2 weeks must be a sad record). A lot of people will probably lose their job and like I said before, I truly feel for them. I'm not a fan of GAAS but this is something you wouldn't wish on your colleague devs (dislike them or not) on whatever platform.

When Halo Infinite wasn't doing so great a lot of people laughed at MS. With Concord, the situation is even worse, and people with a sense of schadenfreude will turn up again, which is sad & cruel!

The person(s) responsible for giving this the green light will probably stay unscathed and won't have a worry in the world. Many gamers can see the market for these are over saturated! (still leadership made this expensive gamble)

This is a financial disaster and the dev will probably never recover. Tough decisions are going to be made.

Letting it bleed out on PS+ or trying to remake characters and universe and keep the good gameplay? Is the latter even an option? I mean, lessons will need to be learned but this is such a fiasco for a dev that isn't even bad overall imo.

Edit: and Bungie isn't doing very well with future Marathon either, according to Jason Schreier!

Will this massive failure and the state of Destiny be enough to force Sony into going back to focusing on quality single player games that people actually want to play?

In a way, this is Sony's karma for ignoring their fans and their legacy titles such as Bloodborne, Ape Escape, Gravity Rush, Killzone, Resistance, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, etc.

Let's hope Astro Bot does well enough that it sparks some hope for Sony to revisit their hidden gem of a games

@rjejr Er…weren’t they implementing microtransactions anyway? Your statement seems a bit…misinformed if so.

Never forget that this publication rated Concord 7/10 and The First Descendant 3/10

@naruball And everyone is entitled to like or dislike those things you mentioned and voice their opinions.

@LazyLombax I think we're at the point now where 7 needs reevaluating. So many games are a 7 these days, it doesn't mean anything any more. If a game functions, plays reasonably well, but does nothing exceptional... seems to be a 7? But a 7 is a good score, so how about those games in the former category are scored lower.

Lol. Did this article crash the site?

@__jamiie you mean like the following examples?

e.g. "We need a new manager for the store down town. They will need to have some managerial experience to apply for the job."

"Find a babysitter who can prove they are responsible and are certified in CPR."

"An employee will not do a good job if they don’t have the right training."

"Someone was just here and they left their phone behind"
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/The-Singular-They

Now that is, as they say, a big oof

And honestly I'm not surprised the game is dead now, it severely under performed.

Pronouns were included in Concord so that you could say

"Oh damn, he's in that corridor over there."

And your teammate can say

"Um Excuse me they're not a him they're a she!!"

@__jamiie exactly. And everyone else is allowed to consider all the fuss over such matters blown out of proportion/silly.

Again, imagine a group of people constantly attacking devs who include female characters with red hair. Are they allowed to express their dislike? Of course! Are you allowed to consider the reaction over this particular matter silly? I think so.

This is fast. I wonder what will happen with Firewalk. Will Sony put the whole studio in the chopping block like they did with Japan Studio, London Studio, Pixelopus, Evolution Studio, etc?

I wonder what will happen with Marathon and Fairgame$ because both games doesn't looks promising either. Sony would be d*mb if they didn't do anything and repeat the mistakes like they did with Concord.

But this is an expensive lesson for Sony. $100+ million was lost because they're chasing live service trend, an oversaturated market instead stick with what they do best with single player games.

If only Sony could used those money to greenlight a couple of single player games from their classic IP that PS fans wants...oh well.

All these people attributing Concord's failure to some woke nonsense ("Oh no, this cisgendered character is being referred to by their at-birth pronouns — THIS GAME IS WOKE!" Like, do you people even know what you're mad at anymore?) have absolutely zero business sense. There are A LOT of reasons Concord flopped, and, at most, a presumable anti-woke boycott was only 0.5% responsible.

This sucks for the development team, but I can't say I wasn't one of the ones hoping a failure here and a success in Astro Bot. Hopefully they can put together a decent re-launch (make it F2P, for God sakes) and find some moderate success. I'd much rather have that than the whole team being let go.

@__jamiie And that's their right. I personally have enough respect for people to refer to them in whatever way they wish 🤷

@__jamiie then you should say exactly what you mean instead.

@InsaneWade Fun fact: I have a degree in English language so I don't need your Googled definition of they/them.

@The_ghostmen just watched that movie on YouTube... Bad.

This screams a tax right off.

@Anke Yes, going to grab my popcorn. Hmm TheQuartering or HeelvsBabyface.

Got nothing new to add but it so i'll copy and paste from my past statement. I see people saying it should have been f2p. No, it being f2p would not have saved it. People were turned off as soon as they saw what it was. The character designs/the world etc and all the extra stuff that went along with it is the first thing people notice and if you can't pass that part, your gameplay better look hella tight to make up for it to at least keep their interest up. When it comes to this game, the latter doesn't. So the game was doomed from the start.

The funny thing is, the whole hiding till is practically done thing PlayStation likes to do now days may have bit them in the ass this time. Because if they had shown this off years back, they likely would have gotten the same reaction possibly leading to some other action. What action I don't know but you would have had time for more action instead of sticking your head in the sand because it's already too late.

Not surprising since their PR team have been horrible.

Wonder if all the live service plans goes up in flames and they reach $1 Billion in lost.

I'm having fun watching this crash and burn. When will they learn?

They really should give everybody a refund if you can't play the game anymore a month after release.

A shame the developer wasn't allowed to just make this into a single player game. I never played it, but it seems like there were enough good elements there that it could've been a solid single player FPS.

Best decision they could make. It should never return either. Astro Bot is what i'll be playing on friday. Hopefully Sony learns a lesson and pulls out the plug for Marathon and Fairgame$ before those games have the same faith. At least for me i'm not buying those game, i have no interest in them at all.

And they were planning on releasing more of this type of stuff?

Hope anyone’s livelihood that’s affected by this, will get back on their feet ASAP 🙏🏿

Concord' Lead Character Designer Believes "Whites Must Acknowledge Their Privileged Position, And Then Actively Work For Equality" Also Claims The Judicial System Is "White Supremacy" For that im glad the game tank and hope people like this get fired. God its 2024 people we are all human and skin color dont mean anything so stop using it to divide people. We are all in this together. Stop the hate.

@OthmaneAD uh... Gender isn't woke/political lol. And even if that were the case, League of Legends and Overwatch are way more "woke" than Concord and are some of the most played games in history. Many factors caused the failure of Concord, but including one non-binary character was not the reason

Honestly, the only people suffering here are the developers, they all probably knew if would be a difficult sell to the public (considering previous games) it's a very hit or miss style of game in which very few actually become huge hits. Those Devs will most likely be out of a job now due to the big wigs probably forcing them to make it. Just another Rocksteady situation.

When will these VP's learn that no one wants more of these games.

A remake of something would have had more success, and that says alot

Wow, this should be a really pricey lesson for Sony. But as execs are they'll just be looking for the next flavor of the day to latch on to.

@__jamiie your last reply to me was removed before I could see it. Go figure. LUCKILY, I still got the email. Do you think maybe it is about respect? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, if everyone actually just respected people enough to accept them as who they are, we'd probably hear nothing about the matter? Ever? Instead, we have people so up in arms; "ooooh I'm being told how to refer to people, however will I cope?" Grow up, respect people more. That's all I'm going to say.

Wowza. Yikes. Dang. Poor one out for Firewalk…

I feel bad for the devs. I hope they can remain employed.

@Snick27 "For that im glad the game tank and hope people like this get fired."

Imagine this: one of your colleagues says something bad/wrong. And soon afterwards the company where you work at shuts down. And people celebrate you and everyone else losing your job.

How would you feel? You said nothing. It was a colleague/ manager, etc. who did, yet others are happy that you and every other employee are suffering.

tl;dr
If someone where you work says something indefensible, should others be glad that you lost your job?

@OthmaneAD I love the "everything I don't like must be part of someone's agenda" mentality.

@Suur The game was utterly rejected and pounced on like nothing ever seen before. Consumers have done enough. Firewalk clearly has talent, and closing the studio is absolutely not the right direction. Completely disagree

@scoobdoo truly ridiculous that isn't it, meanwhile tfd is still going strong with tens of thousands of concurrent users 🐐

@naruball I'd love to say what I really think, but I'd just be censored and canceled.

Well I mean, I had no idea this game even existed until I saw the name trending following this announcement. Still, pulling the plug this soon?? Like c'mon guys, at least try to breathe some life into it. Seems like an awful waste.

@Wallace80 sure, buddy.

Seeing quite a bit of ‘This is the most colossal failure in the history of the universe’ hyperbole here. Is Concord hot garbage? Of course. Should it ever have been greenlit? No way. Even so, I’d cite Redfall and Suicide Squad as two objectively worse titles in recent memory.

On a side note the new trailer for Mario and Luigi Brothership just revealed the game takes place in Concordia. Now we just have to wait and see if Astrobot has us finding Concord special bots on the day Concord shuts down.

@TheBigK I think in other cases, there was some hope that the game can be saved. Take Multiversus for example. It started out well, it became a hit for months and then it lost its audience. So, they thought, we can't produce enough material to keep them interested, let's take a break, create more and then relaunch it and offer them a a constant stream of content to make sure they're entertained and don't move on to the next big thing.

With Concord the numbers were so low that they probably realized that it's beyond saving. Who knows? We'll see.

@NEStalgia I totally agree, and Sony are going down a path that will lead to their demise, they cannot survive without the PlayStation income, yet they seem to be royally screwing it all up.
A Pro console rumoured with an extremely high price tag, and games no one wants to play for ‘reasons’.

They will now be facing a new Nintendo console hardware and the explosion in PC gaming handhelds, unless they get some huge single player AAA games out like they are know for they will be on very rocky ground.

@Balaam_ oh those games are worse from a technical standard but the thing is that they still sold enough to at least keep the lights on for more than 2 weeks. Concord really is the new standard for biggest gaming flop of all time along with ET, and like ET I think it’s failure is indicative of a wider problem in the industry with another video game bubble burst imminent.

@kuu_nousee "This is a huge negative dent into that and who knows might delay or take some single player games from AAA to AA quality."

Is a reduction from AAA to AA - however you'd quantify that - really such a bad thing, though? All this nonsense, ongoing price hikes on games and services, when the realistic answer to "games keep costing more to make" is probably to stop making your studios bigger and bigger, and stop burning time and money on graphics and gameplay features (Yes, you can pet the dog! And it has fully physics-modelled fur!) that don't add anything beyond a split-second of novelty.

Ultimately they're in the classic monetarist trap of continually spending more in the hopes of making more, and if they don't adapt to a more realistic model of making games the AAA industry will implode on itself sooner or later - whether from sinking fortunes into doomed projects like this, eventually pricing their own customers out of the market, or so on.

People are sick of Live Service games. The sooner the useless executive class learns this, the better.

Quite aside from one’s opinions on including pronouns, I think the discourse here demonstrates that putting them in character bios was a stupid thing for the developers to have done in the game. For the proportion of the gaming public that already agree with stating one’s pronouns, I doubt it generated a many extra sales that weren't already going to be made. But for the proportion of the public that think you shouldn’t/don’t need to state your pronouns (which all the polling I’ve seen is a vast majority in the US and U.K.) it signalled that this game was made by people with that opinion and likely cost them more sales.

@StrickenBiged I’ve seen it with films too, if you follow that particular route, you’ll realise the market for this path is not very big at all, just very loud but they don’t buy your games or watch your films, and the majority who do do that will now boycott you.

@StrickenBiged I think it's a little more nuanced than that.

Usually when people have decided to hate on something, they'll find any excuse. For example, with Concord the narrative was "How dare Sony make a game as service!!!1!". Then suddenly everything was a problem. Helldivers II was perceived well and everyone started buying it, despite its flaws. For some reason, being a gaas wasn't an issue.

Baldur's Gate 3 is another good example. The argument many people make repeatedly is that making the games diverse or having LGBT characters is a wrong decision because gamers are a) either people who hate that or b) people who don't play video games in the fist place. Yet the game did exceptionally well. Despite the "oh so horrible diversity".

That’s wild lol

I remember that unveil reveal on how they promised support for a long time. I lol'ed back then and i lol'ed now.

Maybe ask players what they actually want?

This game unfortunately may now be a tax write off.

Just to think we still have another 3 first party releases to go like this.....ooofff.

@RoomWithaMoose
I'm not sure Sony can afford to test your theory many more times.

@BacklogBrad If rest of production will be landfilled then yes, it will have huge value even if never playable again.

@Savage_Joe right I get that. I just find it weird when something like Concord with much more important issues has so called wokeness be suddenly why it's failed. Even though I'm pretty confident the game was never gonna do super well anyway.

@Savage_Joe oh yeah that's facts. Think the team failed to do research on their demographic (if they had one). Regardless, even if we have slightly differing opinions, Thank you for taking the time to reply to me honestly and respectfully.

Did anyone get a refrigerator box to bury this in?

@crossbit yep you make good points.

AA isn't bad versus AAA but mostly when I've seen people say basically "kill all the GaaS games for single player games" their focus is mostly on only wanting AAA exclusive single player games from PlayStation based on comments.

Your right AAA games and the forever profit are gonna kill this industry or at least some companies along the way, especially when they don't sell enough to profit then fund the next similar game.

It will comes back F2P

Unprecedented for sure!

@naruball I think the difference with games like BG3 and OW and other games which are woke-but-successful is that they ‘do the woke’ well.

For instance, some OW characters are LGBT, but the game only ever references it subtly. A in-game voiceline here, a moment in a cutscene there. In contrast, Concord’s use of pronouns was clumsy. The way Concord could have done inclusivity so as not to cause a backlash was to have other characters use the trans and NB characters preferred pronouns when speaking about them, and treat it like no big deal.

I’m not saying the use of preferred pronouns by the devs caused the game to fail, of course not, but I’m saying it was a) unnecessary and b) signalled that the devs were of a particular political leaning and that likely put people off more than it attracted anyone.

Well well well...

I feel very sorry for the developers. All their efforts for years and then this. Nobody says that there’s anything wrong with the game, just that it isn’t distinctive enough to stand out. Perhaps it could be relaunched as a free-to-play game.

@ATaco So while you might feel great about "sending a message" - not sure you'll feel so great if they hike the price of PS+ again to compensate. I think Sony's been making too many mistakes of late, and I think there's a deeper organisational/management problem than just live service here. There's some fragility in the whole gaming industry, and I'm not sure any of us should be gloating (or that Sony shouldn't be listening, rather than just wishing this away)

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
They'd murder the remaining goodwill they have if they hike the price up yet again. No way Sony is that dumb and if they are...well then I'll finally abandon consoles and go PC.

@ATaco to be fair... I think there's a real risk of it. Sony aren't the company to care about what customers think... Concord being canned isn't about us, it's purely financial reasoning.

@naruball this is a good point however, I also think it goes to show how much we as humans are driven by values, the more central they are, the more potent our reaction is to whatever appears to threaten or insult them.

Take black myth wukong. You have people from one side of the political spectrum criticising it for being bland boring and doing nothing different from the likes of God of War simply because China, but GoW is a very good game. So I’d interprete that as, they got the formular right. But China seems to be public enemy number 1, CCP, representation, dictatorship you name it, so anything from there is bad.

Concord is apparently an overwatch copycat albeit a paid for one. I’ve heard that overwatch is a good game too. Unlike overwatch it appears to really stick it to the values of people on the other side of the political spectrum (pronouns and all that), even more than overwatch. So although it’s a good overwatch clone, through the „shades of values“ it’s trash. The only aspect of gaming that transcends values on both sides is fun, gameplay. That’s why one person will platinum TLOU2 and still call it trash 🤣 - denial at its best.

I’d argue everyone is sadly playing the same „dirty game“ only that from their perspectives, they are fighting the good fight, they are the good ones.

In Uganda we say „happiness is a choice“ if you love the game, play it. Sad it’s closed but trying to convince someone to see things outside the „Lens of their values“ is a losing battle. Choose happiness, don’t get too involved in this stuff too much 🙏🏿

It’s kinda sad to see people on here that would actually get along really well had they just not known their political affiliations arguing 🥲

I read that eb games Australia has started contacting anyone who purchased a physical copy to return it for a refund.

It's disappointing they didn't give it more than 2 weeks to prove itself. But that being said the numbers were really bad, I'm genuinely not sure how much longer it could have gone on for anyway.

It's been really weird. I've seen the character designs blamed, I've seen the game design blamed, I've seen the live service blamed, I've seen the lack of advertising blamed. Honestly I think there's likely elements of all those and more, it's just really unfortunate.

The characters are not immediately likable, but I have to say some of them grew on me, not the main spikey guy but the others. They gave me old sci-fi comic book vibes, as did the colour palette. The graphic design and UI was super nice too, very retro futuristic...but perhaps a little too late to the trend?

The gameplay sounded solid if generic, but it's not like these games don't change and evolve overtime. A solid but generic base is a good starting point to grow with the community from.

The advertising...there was a ton of it and it looked high quality...but I never really saw it naturally. I had to search it out. Even that upcoming Amazon series has a Concord episode in it, assuming that's not also pulled. But all that stuff never rose above the negative.

Being live service, or GaaS, I think was it's biggest issue. There are so many places chasing that now and it's clearly money motivated rather than creatively motivated. Also it's a genre dominated by immovable, unmatchable titans like Fortnite. Same for the hero shooter genre, though Overwatch is faltering. I think that combined with people's disdain for Sony announcing like 20 of the damn things and then cancelling 2 of the ones people were actually interested in prior to this. It all just left Concord in a bad spot, it could have been amazing and I think it would have struggled.

Either way, my thoughts go out to the devs. I can't imagine morale or job security is high right now. I hope you guys are able to take what you made and make something else, something more successful, out of it. I said it before but a 10-20hr single player game in this world would be awesome to me!