It looks like "Concord" is officially joining the ranks of countless other live service flops. The hero shooter never had a chance in hell.
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00:00It looks like Concord is officially joining the ranks of countless other live-service
00:04flops.
00:05The hero-shooter never had a chance in hell.
00:08How bad is it?
00:10You're still mad at me?
00:12Firewalk Studios game director Ryan Ellis announced in a September 3, 2024 PlayStation
00:18blog post that the game is being taken offline on September 6.
00:22When all is said and done, Concord will only have been fully live for two weeks.
00:26We knew that the initial Concord launch was a disaster, but it's still shocking to see
00:30just how quickly the plug is being pulled.
00:33Explaining the situation, Ellis wrote,
00:35"...while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize
00:40that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended."
00:45Ellis revealed that sales for the game have already been halted, and Sony will be issuing
00:49refunds to anyone who purchased Concord, though the refund process will vary depending on
00:54the platform.
00:55Firewalk Studios and Sony were no doubt hoping the game would get a warmer reception, but
00:59just about everything that could have gone wrong with Concord did.
01:03Despite spending years in development, the game arguably wasn't really set up to succeed.
01:07When the first trailer dropped in June 2024, everyone said that Concord looked weirdly
01:12underbaked, and there weren't many people excited by the idea of a new hero-shooter
01:17in a crowded market.
01:18Concord deserved better than it got, but its failure is part of an ongoing trend that says
01:23a lot about the live-service space right now.
01:25"...I am glad you avoided a dishonorable death."
01:30The cinematic trailer for Concord didn't get people terribly excited, and that's partly
01:34because the game's story didn't really seem to match with the actual gameplay.
01:39Gamers took note of the Guardians of the Galaxy vibes in the trailer, but players argued that
01:42they didn't get a sense of who the characters actually were in the full game, and the mechanic
01:46of constantly rotating player characters didn't help much.
01:50A much bigger issue for gamers, however, was the price point.
01:54In a space dominated by games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, and other free-to-play titles,
01:59$40 was a bridge too far for some players.
02:02Making matters worse, players also had to jump through some extra hoops to play the
02:06game.
02:07PlayStation Network account holders playing on PS5 could just grab the game from the PlayStation
02:11Store and go, but anyone playing on PC had to set up a PSN account and link it to Steam
02:17or the Epic Store.
02:18Sony tried the same tactic with Helldivers 2, and players revolted so hard that the company
02:23had to reverse course and apologize, and that game still took a huge hit in terms of player
02:28engagement.
02:29Concord launched with the PSN requirement, which didn't win the game any extra support.
02:33"...that was not the plan."
02:35Leading up to the game's official launch, Concord ran into some more stumbling blocks.
02:39A beta testing period ran from July 18th to the 21st, which was a quick turnaround from
02:45the announcement trailer.
02:46Players who heard about the beta in time were forced to jump through the same aforementioned
02:50PSN hoops, which might help to explain why barely more than 2,000 players showed up.
02:56Even though some players jumped on Reddit and X to express support for the game, early
02:59adopters admitted that it did have some serious flaws, including derivative gameplay that
03:04didn't add much new to the genre.
03:06When professional reviewers got their hands on the game, they said pretty much the same
03:10thing.
03:11Concord currently has a 62 on Metacritic, which just isn't strong enough to move the
03:15needle in an extremely competitive genre.
03:18Ultimately, what gamers were hearing from beta players and professional reviewers wasn't
03:22enough to get them to show up for Concord when the game actually launched.
03:25Unfortunately, the final straw for Concord was the game's actual launch.
03:30The poor word-of-mouth and apathetic fan response to the initial trailer finally caught up with
03:34the game, which had an abysmally low concurrent player in its first week.
03:39On Steam, the game peaked at a shocking 697 players, meaning that significantly fewer
03:44than half of the people who showed up for the beta checked out the final version of
03:48the game.
03:49Those numbers would be bad for a free-to-play game, but they're even worse for a game priced
03:53at $40.
03:55Concord has reportedly made a million dollars, which is like a drop in the ocean compared
03:59to the budget a AAA multiplayer game like this requires.
04:02And according to Forbes, the game may have cost around $100 million to develop.
04:06It's an uphill battle for any live-service game to become really popular, and Sony apparently
04:11saw the writing on the wall here and decided to take the loss, rather than keep the game
04:16on live support.
04:17We were apart for so long."