Concord's Unprecedentedly Fast Failure

[Chidubem]

When it comes to live service games, it's not a new thing to hear of shutdowns, commercial issues, low player counts and player downturns. We've seen many games that have ended up the same way as Concord in the past, but now, it seems the record has been broken by Concord, the fastest game to get shutdown, and with a tech giant behind it.

Sony saw its 8 years of development and thousands to millions of dollars of investments crash within 11 days after its release. And it's kind of shocking because Firewalk started developing the game 8 years ago, in 2016. But when you realize that the 11 days Concord stayed in the market is actually shorter than other games who got shut down after their release, it's pretty shocking.




This same Concord we know had a whole Sony Playstation behind it, a pretty large budget, a long development time, and pretty good developers, but it barely made it past a week after launch. Even Babylon's Fall, a live-service game by PlatinumGames, managed to limp for six months before shutdown, while Anthem, BioWare's ill-fated shooter, has remained available for players for over five years despite its commercial struggles and low player count.

It's worth noting that these games never had a big gaming brand behind them, but still, they managed to surpass a brand-backed game, Concord. We all know that Concord isn't the first game to fall, but it fell the fastest.

The industry's push to live-service games was a huge setback for Concord and other games that have fallen similarly. Concord had a good design, great gameplay and graphics, and nice characters, but the reason why the players failed to see this, was because they were already accustomed to popular and established titles that already existed. A game that could have been successful four to six years ago, is now among the fastest games to get shutdown, what a smack in the face for Sony.

"Well I hope lessons are learned from Concord.
The lesson was already there. This games industry doesn't learn shit…

• Battleborn
• Lawbreakers
• Crucible
• Bleeding Edge
• Anthem
• Redfall
• Fallout 76
• Overwatch 2
• Babylon's Fall
• Breakpoint
• BF 2042
• and many more!

— Michael (@LegacyKillaHD) September 4, 2024

As we can see, it's hard to carve a space in an oversaturated industry. Gamers have limited time and money, and not everyone wants to play, let alone pay for, yet another live-service game that's very similar to what they've already played or what they're playing.

How about you, did you play any of these live-service games that have now failed? And what are your thoughts on this topic? Let us know in the comments.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Consumers are tired of paying extra and depending on online control.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

Imagine if publishers just made single player games, sold the game, moved on and made more single player games. Instead, they imagine they're going to craft a money tree and then harvest from that one money tree without all the trouble of making more game forever.

 

[Totally]

The usual trying so hard to make a game for everyone that didn't offended anyone that just ended up becoming a game for no one.

 

[chrcoluk]

Concord too late to the game, there is an interesting tid bit I read on Wikipedia about the 1980s game crash, prior to the crash there was too many low effort games that were just cloning a previously successful idea. They seen something fly of the shelves, so then made their own version of that game. It was Sony's attempt as a platform lock in game as a service.

We are getting that now of course in the gaming industry publishers want to stick to successful franchises hence annual release of Fifa, COD etc. But also lots of clones made of other successful games, which over saturate the market. The eastern market right now its cloning dark souls, and the western market its online shooters, or at least online game as a service model in general.

We need a reset where we see games with original ideas, lower budgets, shorter development times, less complex engines/visuals, offline single player focus, certain games like sports games could have multiplayer bolted on, and I think we would be in a better place. But I feel we need another game crash for publishers to wake up. I remember Microsoft refusing a fable 4 at the start of the online multiplayer craze as they felt that type of game was dead. They then made a truly excellent game in Lost Oddysey to try and break in the Japan market, thinking only eastern gamers liked that sort of game, and then when they didnt break in they abandoned all of it, crazy.

 

[Bwaze]

"Sony saw its 8 years of development and thousands to millions of dollars of investments crash within 11 days after its release."

It might costed just thousands for a large studio to develop a huge game release in 8 years? :-D

 

[chrcoluk]

"Sony saw its 8 years of development and thousands to millions of dollars of investments crash within 11 days after its release."

It might costed just thousands for a large studio to develop a huge game release in 8 years? :-D

Think of how many smaller budget titles could have been made to fill out the thin library with that money.

Wonder if controllers now get jacked up even more to pay for it.

 

[the54thvoid]

Keep comments related to the topic of the OP.

Posts about culture wars and gender ideologies will be removed. So might you be if it's not your first rodeo doing that.

Don't post if that's your angle in this thread.

Edit - if you don't like the charcater design - that's perfectly fine.

 

[qlum]

Let's not forget Hyenas in that list, a game that got cancelled at the end of it's beta. At least Sega saw the writing on the wall at that point.

 

[Rais]

These publishers are completely out of touch with reality and their customers. Something in the decision making and management of this industry doesn't work and they're also incapable of analyzing the failure and understanding issues.

Keep voting with your wallet, guys!

 

[Ruru]

I think that the problem here is that games like this are too similar with existing ones, so if there's already a GOOD one, you need to make a better one.

...still hate that Blizzard forced us from OW to OW2 and I don't like that myself.

 

[Eternit]

Concord too late to the game, there is an interesting tid bit I read on Wikipedia about the 1980s game crash, prior to the crash there was too many low effort games that were just cloning a previously successful idea. They seen something fly of the shelves, so then made their own version of that game. It was Sony's attempt as a platform lock in game as a service.

We are getting that now of course in the gaming industry publishers want to stick to successful franchises hence annual release of Fifa, COD etc. But also lots of clones made of other successful games, which over saturate the market. The eastern market right now its cloning dark souls, and the western market its online shooters, or at least online game as a service model in general.

We need a reset where we see games with original ideas, lower budgets, shorter development times, less complex engines/visuals, offline single player focus, certain games like sports games could have multiplayer bolted on, and I think we would be in a better place. But I feel we need another game crash for publishers to wake up. I remember Microsoft refusing a fable 4 at the start of the online multiplayer craze as they felt that type of game was dead. They then made a truly excellent game in Lost Oddysey to try and break in the Japan market, thinking only eastern gamers liked that sort of game, and then when they didnt break in they abandoned all of it, crazy.

I think there is little space for more multiplayer games, as the players already have their favorite games and they play them and will only move to the other game if it is significantly better. With single player games it is a different, as people are buying new games after they've finished previous. If they like some idea they will play similar games. Also if the single player has a slow start it is not a big problem and you can keep it in the stores and might eventually recover the investment. In case of the multiplayer if there is not enough players it will deter others to buy.

 

[Carlyle2020hs]

I do remember vaguely having been showed a good looking game with some weird tags.

Those tags i had nothing in common with so i didn't find out whats behind the game.

So who choose those uncommon tags?

 

[chrcoluk]

I think there is little space for more multiplayer games, as the players already have their favorite games and they play them and will only move to the other game if it is significantly better. With single player games it is a different, as people are buying new games after they've finished previous. If they like some idea they will play similar games. Also if the single player has a slow start it is not a big problem and you can keep it in the stores and might eventually recover the investment. In case of the multiplayer if there is not enough players it will deter others to buy.

Yep, problem with this model, is players get stuck to playing their favourite game continuously. It saturates far easier because of that as you can only play one game at a time.

 

[bug]

It seems Seinfeld did the planning for them: "Why am I watchingplaying this? Because it's on TVPS5!"

 

[NoneRain]

No one wants to play a game with characters like that. Their appearance and dynamic were straight up cringe. One BIG element of a hero shooter is character design, if you fail at that, most ppl will not jump in, unless the gameplay is incredible fun, what wasn't the case here.

Ppl are saying the biggest thing for their failure was genre saturation and marketing. For those:
1- Marvel's game is doing fine and will do fine. You already have the character design and habilities to build interest, all you need is a good gameplay. (to keep it relevant is another story).
2- Being somewhat similar, Valve's new game is making a lot of noise and people are already hyping it. Consider that hero shooter + moba-like is nothing new (rip Paragon). And if you say "Valve is different", remember Artifact.
3- Ppl I know that are fans of the genre said the game sucks. I'm not talking about 'journalists' neither twitter npcs. What I've heard was: "there's zero reasons to play this game, don't waste your time with it". IF ppl that love this kind of game is saying that, no one will pay to play it. One reason the game was refunded as hell.

The thing is: no one taking decisions on Concord dev. knows how to make a good game. They were more focused in making a game in their parameters, to mark checkboxes, than to make a fun experience. They made a game for "game journalists" (since most gave 7 or 7.5 scores), instead of making it for fans of hero shooters and casual players alike that just want to have fun.
Other games have failed before, but they were somewhat interesting.

 

[Paganstomp]

Reminds me of...

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Eternit]

Reminds me of...

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But it was totally different. Back then the idea was good, to create a game based on a blockbuster movie. But they wanted it before Christmas and had no time to do it properly. It initially sold well, but then people were returning. They send rather little on development but a lot on production of physical media.
Concord was a bad idea from the beginning, they spent a lot of time and money on development and from the start there were very few customers.
Also we've already had a bit of a crash in the gaming industry, but it was caused by overinvestment during lockdowns.
I think Cyberpunk release was more similar to ET, but they managed to recover from the failure.

 

[mechtech]

"Gamers have limited time and money"

Time more than anything for me. If I can't finish a game, and max out the level and gear in under 40 hours, pass. Even at 40 hours, that could take me months to do.

 

[FierceRed]

We're still talking about this? Occam's razor makes this very simple.

• A live service game made money
• Everyone else tried one to Keep Up with (Beat) the Joneses, creating immediate oversaturation that has lasted too long
• Their varying skill levels with timelines, QC and budget management put a bunch of franchises through a similar, but adjacent, wringer where quality and reputation were sacrificed for storefronts and profit projections
• They didn't work

Nothing to do with Twitter. Nothing to do with the economy. Nothing to do with the election. Simply bad games.

Can't we just accept that the people who made the games we loved retired early and the people wearing their skinsuits suck?

Can't we just see that every LSG to come out after Anthem was sunk cost fallacy and "Nah, that'd never happen to me..."?

 

[[XC] Oj101]

This writer needs some coaching, or at least an editor giving the articles a once-over before they go live. I've just been though the Stalker 2 and RDR port articles, and they're certainly not easy reads. The writing is very awkward and, at times, nonsensical. There is also, objectively, a bit much opinion for a news-piece. I hope it can be addressed, because his articles are actually interesting.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Welcome to TPU and I hope you will enjoy being a writer for the site, @Chidubem!

Out of these live-service games, the one I have played from the start was Fallout 76. It actually turned out to be a great game, especially after the Wastelanders update dropped. It was salvaged and eventually reborn. In any case, I have had great fun with it, and every year I pay for a month or two of Fallout 1st (its premium membership) and return to the game, usually around the time they run the Fasnacht yearly event.

The usual trying so hard to make a game for everyone that didn't offended anyone that just ended up becoming a game for no one.

I agree, this sums it up perfectly without going into the nitty gritty that's sure to cause a lot of controversy. I'm surprised to find a thread about it here.

 

[TechLurker]

For the few actual fans, or those who want to own meme merchandise, Sony just put up some merchandise from Concord up on their official site. A Concord Mug, Sweater, and a T-Shirt. Hilariously, the Sweater claims to be a best-seller even on the day it was released, so clearly they had some extremely high hopes about the franchise.