The end for Firewalk Studios: Sony pulls the plug after mega-flop "Concord"

It was the negative sensation when the sci-fi hero shooter "Concord", touted as an AAA title, was released at the end of August 2024 and nobody wanted to play it. The developer studio Firewalk is part of the prestigious Playstation Studios and the game was marketed by Sony. In view of the lousy player numbers, it would be an understatement to call it a flop.

Sony only bought Firewalk less than two years ago and has since invested a lot of money in the development of "Concord". Now Sony is finally pulling the plug: not only is "Concord" being shelved, but also the studio.

Review: This is how badly things went for "Concord"

According to reports, the game wasn't particularly original, but it wasn't completely bad either. However, it did not generate enough interest in the already oversaturated hero shooter genre. At its peak in the 24 hours after release, only 697 gamers were playing the game at the same time - and the number didn't increase. Around two weeks after the release, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) announced that it was shutting down the "Concord" servers and removing the game from sale. The reason given was to see how "Concord" could better reach the player base.

If you want to find out more about this sad shitshow, you can read the background here:

Sony writes off more than 200 million US dollars as a lesson

Firewalk is not the only company affected. Hermen Hulst, CEO of SIE, announced in a press release on 29 October that Firewalk and a second studio, Neon Koi, would be closing. Neon Koi is based in Berlin and developed mobile games.

The organisation had to react when games did not meet the expectations of the target groups, Hulst stated. Since the shutdown of "Concord", the organisation has given extensive internal thought to possible options for "Concord". Now the final decision has been made. "The best way forward" is to permanently abandon the game and close Firewalk. Hulst then thanked the employees of both studios. He hints that some of them could be deployed elsewhere in the company.

"Concord" was Firewalk's first game. It was in development for several years. On X the studio posted a final statement and looked back on the challenges it had overcome. These include porting the game from Unreal Engine 4 to 5 and good technical performance during the beta phase, which was used by - according to the studio - "hundreds of thousands of players". During the beta test in July, there were up to around 2400 gamers in the game at the same time - significantly more than after the release.

The magazine Kotaku reports that Sony invested more than 200 million US dollars in the game, according to two unnamed sources. This money is now lost. Hulst states that lessons have been learnt from the "Concord" case and will be applied in the future when expanding the live service division.