Sony shuts down Concord studio and rules out a return for the FPS

Concord will not be returning in the future as Sony confirms that it has shut down Firewalk Studios alongside another first-party studio.

Despite a triple-A budget, a team full of incredibly-experienced developers, and a generous offering of content at launch, Concord somehow became one of the biggest videogame flops of all time. The hero shooter was pulled offline after just a couple of weeks following dismal player counts, but at the time there seemed to be a shred of hope that it may return in a new form – likely as a free-to-play version of what originally was a $40 release. However, those hopes have been put to bed for good, as Sony Interactive Entertainment has confirmed it is shutting down Firewalk Studios, the creator of the game.

In terms of its quality, Concord wasn’t actually a bad FPS game. However, its attempts to replicate the humorous, space scoundrel vibes of something like Guardians of the Galaxy fell flat, and at the end of the day, there wasn’t much appetite for a new hero shooter to begin with. Despite all of the efforts and expertise behind it, the game was pulled from the PlayStation Store and Steam and anyone who bought the game was refunded.

When this was announced back in September, Firewalk said it would now work to “determine the best path ahead” for Concord. Many predicted that, due to the amount of work that had already been done, it may be repurposed as a free PC game with new monetization options. Or, given it had already done a lot of character and world building and had high-quality cutscenes made that it would drip feed to players weekly, maybe it could be turned into a more narrative experience with the competitive PvP elements removed.

However, Concord has now definitely come to the end of the road, and while I don’t think many will lose too much sleep over that, what I do find gut-wrenching is that Firewalk is being completely shut down.

“After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio,” says SIE’s studio business group CEO, Herman Hulst in an announcement post. “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.”

Alongside the closure of Firewalk, fellow Sony studio Neon Koi is also being shut down and an upcoming mobile action game it was working on has been scrapped.

With so many now facing losing their jobs, Hulst says SIE will attempt to “find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.”

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