Thursday, September 5th 2024
Concord Suffers Disastrous Launch, Gets Pulled off the Market by Sony and Refunded
Corcord, Firewalk Studios' hero shooter, released on August 23 for PS5 and Windows, was pulled from sale on Tuesday and will be taken offline later this week, all thanks to its disastrous launch. Sony announced on its Playstation blog Players who purchased Concord would be refunded as it "explores options" for the game, and "determines the best path ahead."
Game director at Firewalk Studios, Ryan Ellis, announced Concord's fate in a message to players, saying, "Aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we intended." He continues, "Concord fans—we've been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who has joined the journey aboard the Northstar." Ellis added,"Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us."
"However, 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."
Sony is issuing refunds to the original payment methods for players on PS5, whether the game was bought from the PS store via Playstation Direct, or players who purchased the game on PC.
Concord was received last month to an unfavorable response. The game's concurrent players on Steam were surprisingly low, less than 700 players during launch weekend and even lower in the coming weeks. And reaching 30 players on Tuesday, even though the game has sold 25,000 copies since launch (as reported by IGN), indicating poor health.
Reviews of Concord from critics, lamented the game's lack of features that would make it standout, the game's $40 price tag in a sea of free-to-play competitors, and its bland cast of characters. Concord allows the players to take control of 16 Freegunners, a diverse group of aliens, robots, and space mercenaries, each with special abilities, in 5v5 multiplayer matches. Concord was the debut title of Firewalk, although later acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2023.
An option for Sony and Firewalk to bring Concord back to life would be to remove the games price tag, making it a free-to-play title. If monetization is what they're after, they'll have to rework Concord, because it wasn't built as a free-to-play title, as Concord doesn't feature a battle pass or other microtransactions, but instead, Concord promised free updates to those who purchased it.
Source:
Playstation blog
Game director at Firewalk Studios, Ryan Ellis, announced Concord's fate in a message to players, saying, "Aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we intended." He continues, "Concord fans—we've been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who has joined the journey aboard the Northstar." Ellis added,"Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us."
Sony is issuing refunds to the original payment methods for players on PS5, whether the game was bought from the PS store via Playstation Direct, or players who purchased the game on PC.
Concord was received last month to an unfavorable response. The game's concurrent players on Steam were surprisingly low, less than 700 players during launch weekend and even lower in the coming weeks. And reaching 30 players on Tuesday, even though the game has sold 25,000 copies since launch (as reported by IGN), indicating poor health.
Reviews of Concord from critics, lamented the game's lack of features that would make it standout, the game's $40 price tag in a sea of free-to-play competitors, and its bland cast of characters. Concord allows the players to take control of 16 Freegunners, a diverse group of aliens, robots, and space mercenaries, each with special abilities, in 5v5 multiplayer matches. Concord was the debut title of Firewalk, although later acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2023.
An option for Sony and Firewalk to bring Concord back to life would be to remove the games price tag, making it a free-to-play title. If monetization is what they're after, they'll have to rework Concord, because it wasn't built as a free-to-play title, as Concord doesn't feature a battle pass or other microtransactions, but instead, Concord promised free updates to those who purchased it.
38 Comments on Concord Suffers Disastrous Launch, Gets Pulled off the Market by Sony and Refunded
(to no-one)
other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intendedour game was a turd."Note to Developers: There are already enough mediocre and poor games out there. No need to throw one more on the pile.
blog.playstation.com/2023/05/24/introducing-fairgame-a-competitive-heist-experience-coming-to-ps5-and-pc/
I'm doubtful that most of its intended audience knew anything about it until after news of the disastrous launch went around.
Sony is tone deaf.
Games fail for many reasons. And there are many games with the same level of petty-triggers this game has that do well.
As @64K said above:
When some of us complain that modern games aren't fun... Well, news about them certainly are. :D
Also, in concords case it was integrated and promoted pretty heavily in the core of the game, far beyond other examples(that used it as simply flavour text) so that makes it pretty hard to not talk about as it's a major reason of its failure.
You can't simply ignore that when talking about this game utter failure, BUT you must not talk ONLY about that but include all the failings mentioned as it would be a disservice: like devs insulting users, live-service mtx hell WITH a buying cost to add insult(when almost every other in the genre is F2P), extremely prolonged development for a genre that does not need much developing, genre being beaten to the ground and ruined by even the games/studios that spawned them(overwatch 2 is a prime example, which has crashed and burned and that it also integrates those ideologies albeit in a more "flavour text" than the core game), singleplayer games being uber strong, etc
sort of like the "drop in the ocean" idiom, but with turds :laugh:
I'd imagine anyone that wants to play a hero shooter would just play Overwatch which is now free. I'd give it another go if they went back to 6v6 and corrected some other issues.