A mere two weeks after its launch, Firewalk Studios’ live-service game Concord will be taken offline this Friday (September 6th) so the studio can “explore options” on how to turn around the game’s fortunes.
The announcement was posted by Firewalk Studios on the PlayStation Blog today.
Concord sales across the PlayStation Store, Steam and other retailers will cease immediately Firewalk said. And refunds will be issued to any player who has bought the game.
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. 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.
While we determine the best path ahead, Concord sales will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased the game for PS5 or PC. If you purchased the game for PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct, a refund will be issued back to your original payment method.
A couple of days ago it was reported that Concord had sold just 25,000 copies since its launch. With 15,000 of those coming from the PS5 side. Concord struggled to get 1000 concurrent players on Steam at launch and its playerbase on the PC platform has been quickly declining since. On the PS5 side, the story seems to be much of the same, with players reporting longer and longer wait times for matches. And some matchmaking even timing out due to the lack of players.
What Firewalk and Sony plan to do with Concord to relaunch the game and hopefully gain many more players remains unclear. The obvious choice would be to make it free to play. But there is already many similar games and even going free to play could be a struggle to gain people’s attention.
They could rework the game, change mechanics, gameplay, characters and things like that but that would mean more time and money invested with no guarantee of success.
Or, what will most likely happen is that Sony cuts their losses and just buries the game in the landfill of gaming failures. Never to be seen or heard from again.
