Firewalk Studios were a Washington-based developer founded in 2018 by senior veterans of shooters like Halo and Destiny. With this pedigree in multiplayer shooters and Sony's increased focus on live-service, it's not surprising they were acquired in April 2023. Firewalk then announced Concord, a 5v5 live-service FPS, shortly after in May 2023, with an initial CG teaser trailer that was mostly well received.
Unfortunately, Concord's subsequent story and gameplay trailers throughout 2024 were overwhelmingly hated, with character designs especially panned. Early playtests also showcased how gameplay wasn't compelling enough to justify $40, especially compared to its F2P competitors like Fortnite and Overwatch. All this negative publicity resulted in Concord's historically poor launch on PS5/PC in August 2024, which forced Sony to take action they'd never taken before and will likely never take again.
Critically, Concord is the lowest-rated first-party PS5 game with a 62 on Metacritic - a score it shares with Firewall Ultra and Lost Soul Aside, 2 second-party titles made by far smaller development teams at a fraction of Concord's budget. However, it's Concord's commercial performance that's truly noteworthy.
Concord only sold around 25,000 copies, a figure so low that after only 11 days, Sony removed it from sale and forced refunds, opting to completely write off the title in its current state. Firewalk explored how to successfully relaunch Concord, but in October, the studio closed along with confirmation that the game wouldn't return.
Concord marked the first time Sony refunded a game due to its reception. When factoring in Firewalk's acquisition cost as well, the Concord experiment easily resulted in over $100 million in losses. These are historic failures for PS Studios, rivalled only by Bungie in the PS5 era.
Genre: Live-Service Hero FPS
Release Date: August 23, 2024
Days Since Their Last Game: N/A
Metacritic Score: 62