Update: PlayStation CEO Herman Hulst has written a letter announcing Firewalk Studios closure and squashed any hope of Concord returning in the future. Additionally, Neon Koi, who were working on a mobile title, are also being closed and their game canceled.
Original Article
PlayStation are shutting down Firewalk Studios, the development team behind one of 2024’s biggest failures, Concord. This comes from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, though no official announcement of the closure has been made on the official PlayStation or Firewalk social media accounts as of this writing.
Sony first acquired Firewalk Studios last year to support and release Concord, which had reportedly been in development for eight years and cost upwards of $100 million to make. Unfortunately, though, while there was anticipation for what this game could be, all of that was quickly lost when the reveal happened. Common complaints were aimed at releasing a paid hero shooter when games like Overwatch were free-to-play. The generic characters and gameplay reminiscent of Destiny’s PvP didn’t help causes all that much.
Needless to say, Concord never really had much of a chance to gain good will. While it had its fans, many found the game to be “missing something.” Even the game’s second beta saw a massive drop in players and then when release happened, small indie games like Squirrel With a Gun had more people playing it on Steam.
Just two weeks following Concord’s release, Firewalk and PlayStation announced they were taking the game off the PlayStation and Steam stores and refunding everyone who had purchased it. Now, here we are just a couple of months later, and it seems the development team will never have a second chance to fix the game or release a new one.
While there hasn’t been official word yet, Schreier is about as trustworthy of a voice you can hear when it comes to news like this. We would imagine we start seeing the official channels announce Firewalk Studios closure before the night is through.