PlayStation Kills Its Newest Shooter, ‘Concord,’ After 2 Weeks
Concord is officially dead. In an official statement released today on PlayStation’s blog, the company has announced that its recently released multiplayer shooter will be taken offline after just two weeks of service.
The decision comes after a disastrous launch for the game, which launched August 23 on PlayStation 5 and PC to mostly positive reviews but a middling player count. On Steam, the PC version of the game peaked at an all-time high of only 697 players on its release day — a number so low, it’s dwarfed daily by many games released decades ago. As of reporting, there are only 28 players actively playing the game on Steam, with a 24-hour peak of 110.
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In the blog post, the game’s director Ryan Ellis confirms that Concord will go offline on Sept. 6 and will no longer be available to purchase as of today, Sept. 3, acknowledging that the game’s performance failed to meet expectations.
“[While] many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended,” the post says. “Therefore, at this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.”
The blog post also confirms that anyone who purchased the game digitally will be eligible to receive a refund, although anyone who purchased a physical version on disc will need to go through the refund process of their specific retailer.
The situation is a major blow for Sony whose other big multiplayer game of the year, Helldivers 2, saw viral success online after releasing in February. Many had wondered if Concord could live up to the lofty sales and player count of Helldivers 2, but the response was ultimately more tepid.
Developed by Firewalk Studios, Concord was rumored to have been in production for upwards of eight years, making the decision to pull the plug surprising despite its failure. Intended as a big franchise for Sony, the game was receiving regular updates for its first two weeks, including new, fully motion-captured cinematic cutscenes to be added weekly. While it resembles other multiplayer shooters like Overwatch 2 superficially, the big budget scope of the game and the ambitious plans for its future content rollout were unlike anything seen previously in its genre.
Although the game is being pulled from storefronts and its servers are going offline, Sony and its developers remain vague about its future. Could Concord return in another form? There’s a possibility that it could come back as a free-to-play game, much like Bungie’s Destiny 2, another competitive multiplayer shooter that saw a stagnant post-launch reception but found its audience after being reworked as F2P.
But for now, fans of the game will have less than a week to say goodbye. Farewell, Concord, we hardly knew thee.
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