Concord is being shut down and taken offline just weeks after the game was released. PlayStation tweeted out and shared a blog going over the game’s early (and very talked-about) troubles. Effective in just a few days, on September 6, the game will no longer be playable and will be pulled from sale on both PlayStation 5 and Steam. Full refunds will be given to everyone who purchased the game.
Needless to say, this news is shocking, especially for those who have enjoyed their early time with Concord. That said, this is the first time that PlayStation and Firewalk have openly admitted that the game has bombed. Recent reports estimated that only about 25,000 copies had been sold until about a week ago. For a game that was in development for about eight years and cost millions of dollars to produce, that is quite the failure. Games like Squirrel With a Gun have seen much more success than this PlayStation-backed game.
Concord really hasn’t had much of a strong following since it was first revealed earlier this year. While there was a bit of buzz around the upcoming game before its reveal, many were turned off by its first look. Criticisms were aimed at the generic character design and its $40 price point in a market where established games like Destiny and Overwatch are free to play. All of this led to a debut where the game couldn’t cross 700 concurrent players on Steam in its opening weekend.
While Concord being shut down and giving refunds just a few short weeks after launch is bad, we imagine the game will be transitioning to a free-to-play model in the future. We can’t expect Sony to completely abandon a game less than a month from release and not try to recoup any of its cost. That said, it could be a very long time before we see this game make a reappearance.
