Image: Push Square

PS5, PC Flop Concord Never Returning, Studio Closed Down

Crash landing

by · Push Square

In a devastating PS Studios update, bigwig Hermen Hulst has confirmed that following a period of consultation, PS5 and PC gigaflop Concord will never be returning and developer Firewalk Studios has been closed down. According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, around 172 people will lose their jobs, although Sony does say it’s trying to “find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible”.

In a statement, Hulst said: “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. I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit, and dedication.”

Related Articles

Reaction PlayStation Needs to Take a Long, Hard Look at Itself

Disasterclass

News Sony Shuts PS Studio Neon Koi without Ever Releasing a Game

Swimming with the fishes

Concord officially released on 23rd August for $39.99/£34.99 for both PS5 and PC. In our short-lived review, where we awarded the game a 7/10, we described it as a “clean and well-meaning first-person shooter”. However, sales were estimated to total just 25k units, and by 6th September the game had been taken offline.

This was a big project for Sony, with high expectations placed upon it. Internally, it was allegedly described as the “future of PlayStation”. The platform holder bought developer Firewalk Studios in 2023, and said the team would “help grow” its live service operations. It no longer exists.

Hulst signed off with the following statement: “While today is a difficult day, there is much to look forward to in the months ahead from the Studio Business Group and our teams. I remain confident that we are building a resilient and capable organization driven by creating unforgettable entertainment experiences for our players.”

[source sonyinteractive.com]

  • Share:
  • 133

About Sammy Barker

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.

Comments 144

Hopefully Sony will learn from this that we don’t want generic live service shooters, right? RIGHT?

This has to be the craziest story in gaming I've ever seen:

  • Sony buys a studio that has never put out a game
  • Sony appearently invests an ungodly amount of money into the game
  • Game ends up being the biggest flop I've ever seen and gets delisted less than 2 weeks after release
  • The studio gets shut down

And the saddest part is that the people who greenlit this mess will probably see no consequences

And so the tragedy of Concord is complete. Maybe one day someone will get some private servers going for the small number of us who still have a copy.

Oooof, such a massive waste of time, effort and money.

Such a shame. That's a lot of talent Sony just let go.

Daaaaaamn. I mean I'm not sure what the alternative would have been but wow. Weird it's the biggest entertainment flop of all time and msm barely flinched or noticed.

I feel bad for the developers, Sony should have stopped it or pivoted to something different long before it came to market. People vote with their wallets, and hopefully this shows people do not want these live service, made by committee games with dialogue that sound like every conversation is being had in front of HR.

Absolutely insane. 4 months ago I was watching a state of play where half of it was all about Concord. Now the game doesn't even exist, has made £0 after full refunds, and everyone who made it is out of a job. Huge failure for Sony, and I really hope they learn from it

Great stuff. Now people can solely focus on trashing the Pro instead 👍

Also, "driven by creating unforgettable entertainment experiences for our players" - gotta stay this definitely was an unforgettable experience for the players.

Not surprised. Unfortunate but Concord bombed so spectacularly there’s no way it or the dev studio had a future.

Hopefully Sony have learned a very expensive lesson here, it's a shame for those employed their but sadly inevitable ever since the reveal at the showcase earlier this year. Its just beyond stupid to throw crazy amounts of money at a hero shooter of all things, even Sega was smart enough to drop theirs before releasing it

Removed - unconstructive

"This is the part where we throw our heads back and laugh"

"Ready......laugh"

😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

One of the most insane stories in gaming ever.

They must be getting some tax write off for this, right??

Otherwise it doesn't seem to make a ton of sense. They could have used the teams experience to make some other type of shooter etc? The studio clearly had talent - just bad direction, atrocious art style and late to the market

If there was any sense of justice Hermen Hulst would be the first one fired but in this bizarro world he screws up big time and he then gets the privilege of firing the developers he himself championed and brought over 😒

@mariomaster96 it does smell fishy to me, someone somewhere made a lot of money out of this.

And Neon Koi! Did they ever release a game?

I'll take things no one ever saw coming for 500, Alex.

C'mon Sony, still have time to fire whoever is developing Fairgame$.

Sony is shutting down two studios today. This, and Neon Koi (formerly, Savage Game Studios). Don't make it look like it's developers fault, this is pure Sony's mismanagement and poor decisions.

Absolutely brutal....

Seems unfair though, Naughty Dog have seemingly just blown 5 years on a MP game only to be saved by their back catalogue.

Maybe it would have been better to put them on something the PS fans want rather than this live service junk.

Crazy, I still can't believe Sony bought this team when they hadn't proven a thing. Historically, Sony works with a studio many times before buying.

I hope they've learnt there lesson...They've made some costly mistakes this generation!

I don't know the full metrics behind the game but in such a crowded and jaded market one would've thought it launching as free to play on pc, ps5 and Xbox would've been the way to go. And purely get revenue from cosmetics and paid expansions

Good. Hope they realize this will happen 9 out of 10 times with live service games.
Not good on the studio closing down, obviously

What a shame. I know a lot of people are celebrating this debacle, but genuinely, there are far worse games that have gotten better treatment. I’d say Concord was actually one of the better live service games that launched this year. It was certainly no Suicide Squad. I agree with Pushsquare about it being a 7/10.

One of the greatest examples of "hello, fellow kids" that i have ever seen since the Saints Row Reboot.

Sony sure made history with this one. Like E.T for Atari levels of history.

Everyone could seen this writing on the wall months ago. They brought this on themselves with their hubris, hard to sympathized after that.

Herman Hulst should also be axed for allowing this atrocity to hit the market in the first place.

What a wild ride! One of the most entertaining titles all year...and I haven't even played a second of it. 😅

Pour one out for the most recent victims of toxic positivity. 🫗

"After much thought" but apparently zero thought over the past however many years

@mariomaster96 remember when Apple canned that executive pretty much because of the messy launch of Apple Maps? Too bad that won’t happen here.

Shame they won’t cancel all the others .

Damn. I was looking forward to this shooter for the modern gamer. Oh well...

Oh to be a fly on the wall in PlayStation HQ!

I do wonder if anyone besides the Studio will see consequences and how long it'll be before we see the 'lessons' learned by Sony from this.

Dang. Officially the biggest disaster PlayStation has ever put out.

Still feel like they could've decently salvaged the game to modest success. But maybe this is a sign that PlayStation is finally moving away from their idiotic GaaS initiative. Still terrible for all developers affected, though.

Concord is really entertaining, not the game itself but all the youtube videos I watch about the game, now I'm kind of sad the studio is closing and I won't get any entertainment about the game again.

I do hope sony will know it's better to focus on more important things, like making more single player games and making playstation 5 cheaper so more people buy playstation console rather than competing with their 3rd party on multiplayer games.

Every single exec that signed off on this should be ousted. Start with Hulst, he can go sign on, same as the staff he’s just put a giant black mark on when laying them off.

Concord will go down in the (gaming) history books but not for any good reasons...

The article doesn’t really say. (Or I missed it)

Have the whole studio lost their jobs? Or joining other teams or anything?

Hardly surprising really. I am surprised at some of the comments here because people have just lost their jobs and will now struggle to support their family's and pay bills etc. Tell me in what world is that funny?

Removed - inappropriate; user is banned

@Medic_alert One small difference they made the uncharted series that sold incredibly well, Last of Us series sold well and even Jak and Daxter games sold.

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

Sounds to me like they learned almost zero as they are continuing on this path with fairgames etc

No bonus for Hulst this year

What a disaster. Someone will write a book about this one day.

Hopefully they really do learn from this and Fairgame$ brings something new to the table. Bet Haven are looking anxiously over their shoulders tonight though!

Oooft, what an ending to this whole story, not even a second chance to redeem themselves with another game. Flop games come and go all the time, but I dont think theres been anything quite like this, maybe since ET? Wonder if the episode of that Amazon series will go ahead or canned at the last minute.

Sad to hear but not surprising. Hopefully most of them can find positions in other first party studios.

You would think everything Hermen does going forward will be scrutinised by Yoshida and everyone above him now. I imagine there's an enormous amount of added pressure on him.

I did not expect this outcome at all. Shocked, truly.

This game did so badly it was too undetectable to even harm Sony's image lol.

Jim and Herman are the ones to truly blame. Yes, the studio failed to make a game that had a market, but Jim and Herman are the ones that threw good money after bad on it, and declared it the "Future of PS".

Not surprised. Sony burn $400 million into ashes for this game so no way they make the studio as a support studio as if nothing happen. I got the feeling they will lost more with Fairgame$ and Marathon.

But what i'm surprised is the person who started this whole live service project as well champion this game as the "future of PS" aka Hermen Hulst still has his job.

Or maybe Sony CEO and shareholders gonna kick him out next year when they get a good replacement.

Nonetheless i don't think PS / SIE will learn anything from this case and got better with Hermen as the leader.

This is up there with landfills full of ET cartridges

@Flaming_Kaiser as I said saved by their back catalogue.

Should have bought Square instead lmao

They just acquired them last year! That’s crazy work

@madmaxrules None..

@Medic_alert I have to disagree it's a solid studio with a great library. If you will shut down every studio with a great trackrecord after one miss fire good luck finding any studios left.

At least we will still have the episode about it on Amazon later this year.

@Flaming_Kaiser I mean you are basically saying the same thing I am.

Whoever it was at Sony that caught sight of Concord and thought it looked good enough to buy the actual studio that was making it shouldn't have a job at Sony anymore. That person or those people are a massive liability to the gaming division and their judgment can't be trusted.

@Sakai Sony aren't going to cancel every live service game just because Concord failed.

@Strikke They should not buy more but start investing in their current studios. Why buy up everything it's unattainable. Look at a massive company like MS with their money even they are having a hard time selling it to their investors. It takes so much money to keep studios afloat. And let's be real here how many massive hits did Square-Enix make. I love Final Fantasy but damn they are expensive to make amd does it really payout that great.

@AgentGuapo If you don't want to do take any chances then there is no way to make anything special. So firing anyone for one mistake will not make your company that great.

Hulst is the worst thing that happened to Sony.

So that means they’ll Auto Unlock the trophies or else permanently remove the sku from the accounts of anyone who bought into the game but wasn’t able to platinum it before it was taken offline, right? Of course not. What good is a refund when a perfect account filled with a long list of games 100%+Platinum’d is now permanently stained by something sitting at 25%, 44%, 95% etc completion without any ability to erase it from the list? Another middle finger to trophy hunters. I myself am not affected, as I actively avoid games of this type for expressly this reason, but I imagine it’s gut wrenching to any trophy hunters in that boat.

These platform holders need to cater trophy/achievement design, implementation and execution to trophy/achievement hunters …the only people who really care about trophies to begin with.

@Medic_alert Yep you are right its totally my mistake completely misread your comment.

@Flaming_Kaiser well hey that's just me lol I just think they need an RPG with a First Party polish... either in Japan or Korea, hell maybe even Chinese, seeing as how the likes of Genshin/Wuwa/HSR are rising same goes for Wukong.

@Enigk This show lol I am gonna watch it but it's such a missed opportunity for Square Enix who always makes CGI FMVs for FF/KH etc and they weren't included.... either not asked or Square being Square with their licenses..

On the plus side, I assume the developers got paid a salary, and hopefully got some sort of severance package now. It’s a shame the job isn’t ongoing, but I suppose it’s typical for many contracts to end once a game is completed.

@Flaming_Kaiser "And let's be real here how many massive hits did Square-Enix make." tbh some hits and some misses, like when FF7R or even FFXVI sold 3M each on launch, then the likes of their Avengers game underselling on launch or when people sh@t on Forspoken-- is I think one of the things that are biting them in the ass...

Imagine working on the game for 4 years, your studio being bought by Sony, spending another 2 years of your life on the game, and then having the game shut down after two weeks on the market.

Hulst: ‘this game is the future of Playstation’

Man… the suits up top suck. And internally, they never get the blame they deserve.

@Balaam_ wish we could delete trophies for anything we haven’t platinumed.

Good. Make a bad game, face the consequences. Sad people lost there job but if you can't make a profitable product you really don't deserve one then.

Oof. What a disaster. Can't say I'm shocked this was the outcome but still sad to see. Hopefully some lessons have been learned here.

@fbnaulin Unfortunately, Firewalk takes a lot of blame here. They had this game in development without Sony involvement for longer than Sony were involved. Can’t speak to Neon Koi I forgot they existed.

Sad for the developers. Some of the comments here don't surprise me. Certain people completely lack empathy.

@Korgon the surprise, really, was just that it happened so quickly. A lot of the signs pointed towards this being the outcome after 6, 12, 18 months, as is often the case. I guess they just knew they could not throw any more money at it, even if to just save some face.

@NEStalgia HAHHAHA if only i had a dime for every time i said Sony don’t know how to make online games. We all seen this coming. I feel bad for those that lost their jobs. Bungie you better make sure Marathon don’t flop or you will be making PS4 remasters for PS5.

Hulst is the one who pushed for these investments and now he fires hundreds of people while releasing "statements" and sitting safely at the top.

Dude is the one who needs to be let go. Guy has no clue what he's doing at the level he's at. He's actively harming Sony as a brand/force within the market.

I hope they learn from it and whoever affected land on a solid ground especially the gameplay devs. I really liked the gameplay of Concord and hated everything else

@naruball it does suck for developers who are now unexpectedly out of a job, likely with rent/mortgage to pay in a flat close to the studio where they will now need to move or compete with everyone else in the area for any other industry jobs that might exist. Not nice having to go through that, or think about relocating, especially if you have a partner/family. Perhaps they are in the process of buying a home or have just booked a holiday.

If it were me I’d probably be thinking about doing something else for a year or two and hope the industry sorts itself out a bit.

Well it was either close them or make them a support studio because it's obvious they couldn't be trusted to make their own game again.

@kyleforrester87 yup. And even if some of them were great at what they did, it must be quite difficult to land a job after of the biggest bombs in the industry. So, if they can afford it, they totally should take a break and come back when the situation improves.

Removed - unconstructive

Not sorry. Actions have consequences. Keep continue building mediocrity and this is what you will get. To be honest I am not even sorry for the devs; they knew what they were doing after all.

@kyleforrester87
True. The speed at which things happened with Concord is insane. I also expected at least 4-6 months support but things must have just been extremely dire.

Wow. Kinda awkward for Amazon and Blur studios considering they have episode dedicated to Concord with that CG series they made.

Purchasing Firewalk and funding Concord has to go down as the biggest blunder in PlayStation history.

Hmmm, but will they learn? Will they understand why this happened and not go down that path again? Me thinks not.

The biggest bomb I have ever seen, good riddance.

We tried to warn ya Sony, but you didn't listen. I don't believe the claims this game cost 400$ million to make, but including the price of the studio purchase, I have no doubt Sony lost 500 million on this easily.

What a giant waste of time and money. Firewalk's erasure is not surprising at all.

@Strikke Buying Square will not change anything when guy like Hermen still at the top. Heck, Square could end up like Firewalk, releasing colossal slop and got closed down.

So sad, all because they were forced to add LIVE-SERVICE aspects to a game that wasn't supposed to have it by design.

@AK4tywill surely you respect your own time better than that...

well, so long as you understand that most live service games will fail to last more than 6 months to a year, this isn't all that surprising. these days, it is just a matter of how long the publisher is willing to lose money before pulling the plug. the only difference here is that sony was pro-active in dealing with the failure compared to some other publishers. why bleed money for a year knowing the game will not survive based on all the early metrics? smart move by sony to be abrupt with this mess... of course, the game never should have been greenlit in the first place but sony was desperate to follow the trends. they earned this by way of their arrogance and mismanagement.

hate to say it (well, actually i'm not), but fairgame$ will likely have a very similar fate. live for 2 weeks? maybe a bit longer... perhaps a few months. sony says it will keep making these kinds of games? complete nonsense when resources are finite.

There is something oddly satisfying about how clean they are making the cut though I am really sorry for anyone whose contract might be badly affected by this

@The_Wailing_Doom you're definitely right, as it takes a lot of talent to spend 8 years making a game that gets pulled after 2 weeks? That's something special there.

@dschons except almost all of us saw this coming... 2 failed betas and virtually no one playing it on release? Yeah, saw this coming.

While it sucks for the employees, good riddance.

Instead of closing down the studio I would fire whoever thought this would be the future of PlayStation

Honestly what a waste of decent assets. To not even attempt to do anything with it just goes to show how over budget this truly was.

Biggest failure in history of gaming, at least for software.

Sad that Sony didn’t keep the studio. A loss of talent, and they need more shooters.

I wonder how much of a golden handshake Ryan got on his way out after creating a 300 million plus total loss?

@JokerBoy322 r/woosh

There was no way Sony would recoup those $400M by relaunching the game. Let this be a lesson for those devs who refuse to give what people want

@DualWielding The current Playstation CEO said that

@HonestHick TBF I think remakes of all the Destiny expansions people bought and then got stripped of by Bungie is a more in-demand product than Marathon....

There’s never been a hero shooter that grabbed me, but Concord did. I really enjoyed it and it’s easily the best one that I’ve ever played.

I’ve given overwatch and a few others a try again after Concord went off-line and they all are still very underwhelming to me.

The huge amount of hate that I’ve seen this game get from very obvious bigots has been really crazy, but now many of these bigots have moved on to bashing the new Dragon age.

So glad it flopped so that we don’t have these live service games. People lose their jobs and people laugh and celebrate? Gamers are such pricks at times

Hopefully this will be a lesson for Sony and other studios to listen to feedback and constructive criticism more. Tread lightly in the live service arms race. Its reminding me of the MMO race back in the day. Everyone wanted their own WOW but most of them failed.

@NEStalgia shocked you didn't see this one coming. Yes, the ones to blame wont actually see any repercussions, but this is the way it always plays out. Studios always end up being the ones to pay the cost for bad exec choices.

This is ridiculous.Hermen hulst is to blame for this.as he tought oh yeah its going to be a hit.bring back killzone.word up son

@Artois2 The huge amount of hate that I’ve seen from gamers in the past few years has been insane. The internet feels like it’s most bigots. They want their games filled with white manly men, with manly voices and all the women gave to be sexy with big breasts and wearing few clothes.

I know people will say that I’m being dramatic, but I’m 100% serious that I could fill out an article on this site of the huge amount of trashy people and their hate.

Just in the past week I’ve seen Silent Hill 2, Dragon Age, Mortal Kombat 1 and now Concord all be bashed by bigot responses.

@playstation1995 I don’t know if you heard but gorilla said they’re done with it, They are not going back to the kill zone franchise.

If their goal was to create an unforgettable game, they sure succeeded.

I’d be so pissed if I’d lost my 100% trophy status because of this game lol

Arguably the biggest flop in gaming history. Maybe in entertainment history!

How many projects generate NOTHING?

@Lyedecker can't take that away from them lol

@OmegaStriver gamers are just a group of people.

And people suck.

Man I had heard rumors it was going to come out for free and was getting excited. I was just about to buy it when they took it off the market 🤷

@Contimaloris nope. Sony ,arrogant as always, has already said they're sticking with the plan.

The craziest thing is it's not even like the developers made the worst game in the world. They made a decent game in genre that had no space for 'decent' and was priced in a way which would never work.

The fault is all on Sony's side. For trying to chase a bad genre, for way overbudgeting the game, and for putting it out at a price point that kills it immediately.

Worst Playstation generation of all time, BUT before you hit that heart - I’m also glad sony is still trying to make another successful live service 😁 there’s still room for untapped potential, just stop making a FPS or third person shooter and try something different that also isn’t low budget indie garbage with cartoony graphics. at least that’s what i want .

A twisted metal live service would’ve been nice

@Strikke Definitely Square being Square. They could have let them make a Forspoken or Balan Wonderworld episode.

The writing was on the wall but daaaamn, that’s honestly very sad for the studio that spent 8 years working on this, and it might be the biggest flop in Sony’s history.

@Anke You mean ProbablyMonsters. They sold the studio to Sony for an undisclosed sum.

@AdamNovice no, but cancelling the ones destined for failure would be a good start

Concord had the worst character models I’ve ever seen in my entire life

but the devs and studio heads have to take most blame. one 8 years to make well a generic game second not listning to feed back. and never mind the proffesor pushing self destruct online. but surley someone at sony should stepped in said wtf is going on and pull the plug before it became public. not like sony hasnt canned stuff thats been in oven for that long before

100% the biggest flop in gaming history. Nothing even comes close.

Andnothingofvaluewaslost.gif

@DonJorginho Sony here. Yes, we've learned the danger of making a game when the market for it's genre is over-saturated. So we are pleased to announce that we have spent $250m on a new 2.5D metroidvania.

@MinervaX Sorry, the internet irony filters were on I saw it coming since June.

@nomither6 The thing is when you think of "live service" there's a lot of games that are "live service" that work that aren't what executives think of as "live service" (aka recurring revenue cash cows.)

MOST racing games are "live services" but aren't monetized beyond selling new cars and tracks to add for a long time. The base game is the engine, and some core content, and more content is sold for the same game rather than "sequels" forever and ever. Elite Dangerous is an MMO with no recurring subs, it does sell in-game currency, if you want to buy particular ships or gear outright without playing and grinding, but otherwise it's a base game with free online forever.

The problem is a game that lives as a service and the engineered corporate cash cow of "live service genere $$$" aren't the same thing.

@Balaam_ ....there's bigger issues here than trophies & platinums. Really, are they important ? Do they mean anything ? If there that important to you, you need to ask why you're into gaming

Stop forcing love service games and stop losing money...its easy, but yall are blind.

While I generally hate it when studios shut down and believe in second chances, I don't think too many people will be shocked or distraught about this.

It's a shame for the studio since if Concord was a single player focused game rather than live service BS, it might've had a chance to at least be a quality game. It's not that Concord was such a bad game from a gameplay perspective.

I think having them resurrect Killzone, since Guerrilla is done with the series, rather than do a live service shooter could've went really well, but now we'll never know obviously.

@NEStalgia true. live service has been around since MMO’s, & like everything corporate suits find a way to capitalize in every way

@nomither6 The whole "live service" name is a business suit buzzword with monetization implications. Look at most racing games, nobody called them "live service" it was just a racing game with online play and new maps sold periodically. Now it's a "live service."

@NEStalgia that’s also true & “live service” is a fairly new term. i just haven’t played a racing game in years to really comment about them; the last i played was forza horizon 4, and i dont know what to make of it - would you consider that a live service ?

Prospective employer:: There seems to be an 8 year gap in your work history?
Ex-Firewalk dev: Yes, I was....in prison.
Prospective employer: Thank God for that, I thought you might have worked on Concord. You're hired!

And nothing of worth, was lost.

@OmegaStriver. I know i was just saying that killzone would do much better than concord.or a socom or resistance.word up son

Show Comments

Leave A Comment

Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...