Sony Closes Studio Behind Concord, Which Reportedly Lost Over $200 Million

By Elijah Gonzalez | October 30, 2024 | 1:00pm

Video Games News concord

Sony Closes Studio Behind Concord, Which Reportedly Lost Over $200 Million

Listen to this article

Yesterday, Sony announced the closure of Firewalk Studios, the team behind the multiplayer hero shooter Concord that made headlines for its unfortunate release cycle. The game came out on August 23 of this year, but within two weeks, its servers were shut down after exceedingly poor sales, reportedly only moving 25,000 copies. Originally, it was announced that it was going offline to “explore options,” suggesting that it may be reworked and eventually re-released, but with the shuttering of the studio, that possibility seems to officially be dead.

In Hermen Hulst’s statement explaining why Sony Interactive Entertainment was closing the team, he wrote, “Certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options. After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.” He also stated that “the PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that’s continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title.”

As this explanation points out, one of the main reasons that Concord flopped is because it was another release in a crowded genre. It was competing with hero shooters that had been around for years, like Valorant or Overwatch 2, which already had established player bases. It also didn’t help that Concord cost $40 when most entries in the space are now released for free. In terms of the game itself, reviews were mixed, with some complementing its core shooting, while others criticized its uninteresting character abilities and derivative mechanics.

Most Popular

According to some accounts, the game also sported a massive budget while bringing in next to nothing, so much so that on paper it appear to be one of the biggest fiscal failures in entertainment history. According to a report from Kotaku, the initial development deal was over $200 million, but this doesn’t account for the entire dev cycle, the cost of Sony purchasing IP rights when they acquired the studio in 2023, or the marketing budget, which likely pushed it much higher. Despite these massive costs, it only brought in around $1 million, much of which was refunded when the game went offline.

This tremendous miss speaks to a number of issues, and the first of these is how the increasing size and scope of AAA games has led to development cycles that are so long that by the time a game actually comes out, it may have already missed the trend it was trying to capitalize on. It also ties into how many companies have seemingly overinvested in trying to create the next games as a service (Gaas) hit that will monopolize players’ time and money, like Fortnight, Call of Duty, and more. Meanwhile, Bungie, who helped fuel the modern GaaS trend through the success of Destiny and Destiny 2, laid off hundreds of its developers earlier this year due to the game apparently not meeting financial expectations, showing that even the release that inspired many of these other titles (Firewalk Studios was founded by ex-Bungie devs) isn’t making as much as Sony wants it to.

And beyond the announcement of Firewalk Studios’ closure, Sony also revealed they are shuttering Neon Koi, a team that was working on an unreleased mobile game for the company. They were the first studio acquired for the PlayStation Studios Mobile Division, announced by SIE back in 2022, which has yet to put anything out.

The game industry has been in a tailspin these last two years, with a near-unprecedented number of layoffs. Microsoft let go of thousands of employees from its games division, Sony did the same, studios like Riot followed suit, and now another two studios have joined that list of lost jobs and closures. For the sake of the people who make games, let’s hope things look less grim in 2025.