Concord Director Ryan Ellis reportedly steps down following the game’s delisting

Less than a month following the shocking shutting down of Firewalk Studios’ Concord, a live service game released less than two weeks previously, the game’s director has reportedly stepped down from his position. According to a report from Kotaku, Concord Game Director Ryan Ellis will be moving into a support role at the studio, but will no longer be serving as director. Sony and Firewalk Studios have yet to make a formal confirmation regarding this report, nor is there any confirmation of who will be stepping into Ellis’ now vacant role.

Ellis originally served as a creative director at Bungie on Destiny 2, before leaving in 2017 to lead development on the project which would eventually become Concord. Firewalk worked on the project independently, before the entire studio was acquired in 2023 by Sony as part of the company’s push towards releasing more first-party live service titles. Unfortunately, despite decent reviews, Concord released to unprecedentedly poor sales for a game of its scale, never exceeding 700 concurrent players on Steam and with some analysts estimating it could have sold as poorly as only 25,000 copies. The game was then delisted from online storefronts, the servers shut down and full refunds offered for all players.

On the PlayStation Blog, Ellis acknowledged in a post on the 3rd of September when Concord’s shutdown was announced that “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“. If Ellis is stepping down, it is unclear what this means for the game’s future. A new director may be able to steer Concord in a new, more popular direction ahead of a potential free-to-play or PlayStation+ relaunch. However, it could also be a sign of additional cuts and layoffs at Firewalk Studios, if not a closure of the studio as a whole. Sony in particular has experienced a large amount of layoffs in recent months. That said, considering how much the company has already invested in purchasing Firewalk, it may be reticent to close down the studio entirely just because its first release was a failure.

At any rate, it will remain to be seen what this means for the future of Concord and Firewalk Studios. We will have to await a formal confirmation of this report from Sony. Hopefully the studio will be preserved, and even if Concord doesn’t make a comeback, that it can commence a new project soon.