Sony permanently shuts down Concord and developer Firewalk Studios

Following its aborted launch in early September, Sony has decided to permanently shut down Concord and also close down developer Firewalk Studios. They are also closing mobile developer Neon Koi as they reevaluate the approach to mobile gaming, cancelling the studio’s “mobile action game”.

Taking the unusual step of self-publishing an internal email about the business decisions – to be fair, they would have just leaked, so this is far neater – CEO of Studio Business Group, Hermen Hulst said:

“After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset [Concord] and close the studio.   I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.

“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. We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.

“I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing SIE.  Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization.  Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.”

You can read the full statement here.

Firewalk also had a public farewell, taking to Twitter to tell the tale of the studio and game’s development. In it they reveal that following the studio’s founding in 2018, they didn’t really grow and enter full production on the game until 2022 – a two year turnaround is actually fairly respectable from that point. They also underwent the always tricky process of integrating following their acquisition by Sony.

“We took some risks along the way,” they wrote, “marrying aspects of card battlers and fighting games with first-person-shooters – and although some of these and other aspects of the IP didn’t land as we hoped, the idea of putting new things into the world is critical to pushing the medium forward. The talent at Firewalk and the level of individual craft is truly world-class, and teams within Sony Interactive Entertainment and across the industry will be fortunate to work with them. Please reach out to Recruiting at PlayStation for inquiries, and thank you to all the very many teams, partners and fans who supported us along the way.”

We certainly share that sentiment for both Firewalk and Neon Koi, with the last couple of years making for bleak reading across the game’s industry. Hopefully people can land on their feet as soon as possible.

Concord will go down as one of the biggest entertainment flops of all time, the game having reportedly cost hundreds of million of dollars to produce – including Sony’s acquisition of Firewalk mid-development. Despite aspirations to rival the likes of Overwatch or Valorant, the game barely got out of the starting blocks upon its launch in August. With a £35 price tag instead of being free-to-play, it drew a concurrent player count that maxed out at 697 players on Steam and barely scraped three figures on PC after the first couple of days.

After a couple weeks, Sony took the decision to pull the game from sale, suspend online service, and issue refunds to all players, while Firewalk was given time to “explore options” for a potential return. This was widely expected to be a pivot to free-to-play or a subscriber tie in for PlayStation Plus, but Sony has decided that writing the game off (and potential tax benefits from doing so) is the better path financially.

In our Concord review we scored it an 8/10 and were admittedly saddened to see the axe fall so soon.

Source: Sony

Tags: Concord, Firewalk Studios, Neon Koi, Sony Interactive Entertainment