Floundering 5v5 shooter Concord is set to go offline indefinitely this Friday – just two weeks after its PS5 and PC release – as Sony and Firewalk Studios admit “our initial launch didn’t land”.
Concord – one of several games snapped up by Sony as part of its live-service push under former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan – was initially announced last May. Since then, the response has been tepid, culimating in less-than-stellar player numbers at launch, and subsequent estimates it only sold around 25,000 copies across PS5 and PC.
And now, Sony is taking the remarkable step of pulling the game offline this Friday, 6th September. In a post announcing the news on the PlayStation Blog, game director Ryan Ellis wrote, “While many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognise that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended.”
As such, Concord will be taken offline indefinitely so Firewalk can “determine the best path ahead” and “explore options, including those that will better reach our players.”
Additionally, Concord will be pulled from sale immediately, and everyone who purchased the game on PlayStation 5 and PC will receive a full refund. Those who bought Concord on the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct will be refunded via their original payment method, and Sony says these refunds may take between 30 and 60 days to be appear on purchasers’ bank statements.
Steam and Epic customers will be refunded in the “coming days” and will receive confirmation their refund has been processed. And as for players who bought a physical copy of Concord, they’re advised to refer to the refund process of their retailer. All players, notes Sony, will lose access to the game once refunded.
“We’ll keep you updated,” Firewalk’s statement concludes, “and thank you again to all the Freegunners who have joined us in the Concord galaxy.”
Writing about the “kind and earnest” Concord’s muted launch last month, Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell said, “Out of the trenches of development and into no man’s land it goes, clutching its weapon and its special ability, hoping for the best and bracing for what is, probably, the inevitable, while the forever war for our attention rumbles on.”