Well, this sucks. 

Sony and Firewalk Studios have made the decision to take Concord, their new 5v5 multiplayer hero shooter, offline on September 6th 2024. The game was released to a whimper on August 23rd 2024, making this one of the shortest surviving live service offerings ever, at just two weeks since 1.0. 

The writing has been on the wall since its announcement last year. This launch was always going to be a disaster, no matter the quality of the game or how fun it was. The Beta (sorry, the FREE Beta) had a very poor PC player count, peaking at 2,388 concurrent players, and 1.0 saw drastically lower player counts. This meant nobody was willing to give it a try. It was doomed.

I tried the Beta, and I loved it, as you can read in my previous article. As a consequence, I became one of the few people who bought this game on day one. From my point of view, if I loved it and still didn’t buy it, then I was part of the problem. This is the antithesis of my usual stance on live service games. 

This game was well and truly MY SHIT. I have spent 14 hours in this game since its release two weeks ago, and now it’s going away. I’m sad and disappointed. I’m maybe a little angry with people who actively worked against a game they didn’t even try. Them’s the brakes, I guess. At least Sony is refunding all purchases of the game, although this is little consolation to me right now. 

So what went wrong? Why didn’t this hit? And is there a future for a game that, according to one dev, has already been in the oven for eight freaking years?

Pricing

Concord is (sh*t, I have to say was now) a $40 game in a world where consumers are getting increasingly used to and comfortable with the free-to-play model, especially with competitive shooters. Why should a gamer pay for a game when there are competitors that all of their friends can play, regardless of their financial situation? 

Where free-to-play makes its money is with Battle Passes and cosmetic shops, neither of which were present in Concord (however, I believe a cosmetics storefront was in the pipeline). Concord was a complete game with every one of its 16 heroes unlocked and playable at launch, all feeling pretty different to use. But the fact that it wasn’t free-to-play was a barrier to entry. 

Worse still, some people actually thought it was insulting to charge for a multiplayer shooter in this day and age. Maybe in 2016, when Overwatch was released, but not now! It’s like they got slapped in the face with a fish! 

HOW DARE THEY!

Sony’s Live Service Push 

Optics. 

Concord was announced during the infamous Playstation Showcase of May 2023. This was the one where Jim Ryan’s new strategy focusing on online multiplayer games was really felt, announcing Concord, Fairgame$, Marathon, and giving an update on Helldivers 2. We know now that Helldivers 2 was a banger, but back then, there was a backlash for this new direction. 

PlayStation is known for AAA third-person narrative-focused action adventure games like Uncharted, The Last of Us, and God of War. The core PlayStation fanboys were not happy about this change in strategy and actively rallied against it. I mean, I don’t think Fairgame$ is going to do well either, but I’m not going to cheer on its downfall. 

But that seems to be what has happened. The usual ride-or-die PlayStation ponies didn’t show up for Concord.

Where’s the Marketing?

Who was playing this game? None of the big streamers did, to my knowledge. A couple of smaller to mid-range streamers played it a couple of times, but nobody groundbreaking. I saw Kinda Funny streaming it before its release, and they seemed to be having a good time, but we’re not talking about the likes of Kai Cenat or people with astronomical followings. 

When I started streaming this on its fourth day after launch, there were 67 viewers of that category on Twitch. 67! That’s actually 10% of Redfall’s viewership as I write this article! That’s embarrassing. The marketing team behind Concord needed to get in front of this, showing the game off to a large player base and having a respected streamer vouch for it. That’s how games like this are made, for better or worse.

Bad Timing

Could Concord be timed much worse?

In the last month, Marvel Rivals has had a successful Beta; Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Beta has arrived; Valorant Beta is now on consoles; and Deadlock, Valve’s new hero shooter, has been announced and is in closed Beta. This doesn’t even include some of the smaller titles that have been released or the existing overcrowded multiplayer landscape. It’s no wonder the audience has been diluted.

In addition, these new releases all have something going for them that Concord doesn’t: brand recognition. Call of Duty, Valorant, Valve (widely considered to be one of the best developers in the world), and the Disney juggernaut of Marvel are all oozing with it. That’s not to say they aren’t good games because they seem to be, but a new IP in this environment has to be SPECIAL special to break through.

For all I loved about Concord, I can’t say it was that. It’s a good game with solid, fun gameplay. It’s not OMG, YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS! THIS IS THE BEST GAME I’VE EVER PLAYED! It’s sad that it had to be that to find an audience. 

Overall Experience

I feel protective over Concord because, like I said, this was MY SHIT, but it wasn’t without its problems. Its critical responses are mixed, but they generally land at around 6s and 7s. I’d quote the Metacritic or Steam reviews, but they’ve already been tainted by the announcement of its shutdown. I don’t disagree with those scores in the 60s and 70s.

The competitive modes had so little interest that server queues could last upwards of five minutes if they ever found a match at all. The Galactic Guide, Concord’s ore encyclopedia, was boring walls of text rather than something interesting to experience to become immersed in the world. The Crew Builder mechanic was underbaked, wasn’t very intuitive, and I didn’t touch it once.

Some people thought the visual style and character designs were “disgusting”, but I don’t agree with that sentiment. It’s subjective. I do, however, agree that cosmetic rewards for experience leveling were boring and uninspired. My reason to keep going was because I love me a level-up ding and a trophy ping. That doesn’t do it for everyone. 

I loved it, but it was flawed. Put this together with all of the other issues I’ve discussed, and it becomes clear that Concord was doomed from the start. I just didn’t think it would last this short of a time.

I hope Concord will return, but it can’t be the same as it is today. To give this the best chance, it needs to evolve into a free-to-play competitive shooter with overhauled game modes and character designs. It has to put more thought into the roadmap, the cosmetics store, and rewards. And, although they were very well executed, they need to ditch the very expensive Guardians of the Galaxy-esque cutscenes that, I’m willing to bet, 70% of the player base skips anyway. 

Maybe then it can have a fighting chance in this sea of live service shooters. 

Then again, Sony could equally just cut their losses and kill it for good. I would be sad about it, but I’d probably understand. For now, I can only say I’m glad this game existed, even if it was for such a short time. 

F*ck. This sucks.