Concord going offline indefinitely two weeks after launch, refunds offered

Firewalk Studios’ live service multiplayer shooter Concord has been taken off store shelves and all players refunded less than a month following the game’s launch. This comes after unprecedentedly low player numbers for a AAA first-party multiplayer title, with the all-time concurrent player count on Steam having never even reached 700 players as per Steamdb.

Firewalk Studios Game Director Ryan Ellis announced the sudden change in plans for Concord on the PlayStation Blog. He writes 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. Therefore, at this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.”

Fortunately, Sony and Firewalk Studios are not leaving players with an unplayable game in their libraries without compensation. Concord has already been delisted from all digital storefronts, and anyone who has purchased the game on PS5 or PC will be fully refunded. Details of how this will work can be found in the blog post.

Despite rather favourable reviews by those who actually played the game, it never quite struck a (con)chord with the general public. With the misguided choice to unveil a multiplayer-only game with a focus on story cinematics, character designs and gameplay which were perceived as overly derivative and releasing at a premium price point in a market oversaturated with more established free-to-play offerings, Concord never quite stood a chance. The game had perilously low player numbers, even at launch, making it hard to find matches (and thus risking making the game functionally unplayable for those who bought the game). With Sony and Firewalk hemorrhaging money on server costs and post-launch support with an ever-dwindling audience, something had to be done.

Considering how long and expensive the game’s development has been, fully refunding all players is not a decision the company is likely making lightly. In particular, the fact that Concord will have its own spotlight episode in Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming Secret Level anthology series will be especially strange considering the game will no longer exist to benefit from the promotion. That said, refunding players, taking the game down and gambling on reintroducing the game later on, probably as a free-to-play game, is perhaps a better option than switching monetisation models mid-stream like with one of Sony’s other 2024 multiplayer shooters, FOAMSTARS.

And thus ends the bizarre saga of Concord, at least for now. From its launch on the 23rd of August to its taking down on the 6th of September, the game will have been playable for a mere two weeks, handily eclipsing The Day Before’s record for shortest life cycle for a 2024 multiplayer game. We will have to wait and see what the future looks like for Concord and if it will ever make its return, and if it will be more warmly received when it does.