The sudden shutdown of the newly-launched hero shooter Concord sparked an entirely unsurprising wave of unfortunate grave dancing amongst people who decried the game for being too “woke” or diverse, rather than being a game “for gamers,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. But amidst all that predictable sound and fury, there are also messages of support for the developers at Firewalk Studios, and expressions of hope from fans that Concord will be back.
Concord went into full release on August 23, which means it lasted only 11 days before Firewalk and Sony had seen enough. It’s hard to overstate what a high-speed train wreck that represents: Amazon’s Crucible lasted more than a month before it was un-launched in 2020, while Valve’s CCG Artifact made it almost three years—admittedly with miniscule player counts—before the axe finally fell. Even the infamous Anthem struggled along for a couple years before Electronic Arts threw in the towel.
The only faster cancellation that comes immediately to mind is The Day Before, which went under in just four days and took an entire development studio (or perhaps I should say, purported development studio) with it. Lasting just one week longer than The Day Before, well, that’s really not great.
It also stands in very sharp contrast with the confidence Sony seemed to have in the game pre-release: Sony actually acquired Firewalk in 2023 solely on the perceived strength of Concord, and Amazon based an episode of its upcoming videogame-based series Secret Level on it.
concord is supposed to be in an episode of the new amazon show secret level https://t.co/37NsnLVUrf pic.twitter.com/rNdBt1DbxWSeptember 3, 2024
The near-complete disinterest in the game and subsequent decision to give up on it after less than two weeks is tough to see from the outside looking in, and no doubt so much tougher for developers to experience first hand, a fact acknowledged by other game makers on social media.
“There are going to be a lot of Takes (TM) today but wanted to say this: Launching a game is so fucking hard, and a bunch of incredible talent worked to bring this game to us,” Bungie and Blizzard veteran Daryl Nelson tweeted. “Firewalk didn’t deserve this and I hope that the team can recover and regroup from this.”
“Don’t want to retweet any clickbait or attract trolls, so I’ll just say my heart goes out to everyone at Firewalk Studios regarding today’s news. Fuck,” The Last of Us and Uncharted writer Josh Scherr said.
“My heart goes out to the Firewalk team, this decision could not have been an easy one,” Tencent global senior community manager Evan Berman tweeted.
God, sorry to the clearly talented folks at @FirewalkStudios. It’s a polished-looking game but the high price point launching into a saturated market was always going to be difficult. This is such a strange sutuation to unwrap. https://t.co/YMzmBsvNnUSeptember 3, 2024
The question hanging over Concord right now is, what next? Firewalk said it wanted to “explore options” and it’s possible Concord could come back at some point in the future, retooled and possibly free to play. That’s not unprecedented: Gigantic, for instance, returned as a free-to-play game earlier this year, six years after it was shut down, and Ubisoft‘s For Honor stumbled badly before the release of a free “starter edition” sparked a turnaround. And let us not forget that Cyberpunk 2077, which everyone now loves, was kicked off the PlayStation Store for six months because it was such a disaster at launch.
Some Concord fans are hoping for a similar outcome here, or at least that Firewalk won’t suffer layoffs or an outright closure as a result of the game’s failure:
#Concord shutting down, refunds going out. I do hope that they are planning on relaunching, maybe with some changes in the future. That wording in the blog definitely doesn’t sound like it’s done just yet. Hope you keep your spirits up @FirewalkStudios!! https://t.co/gDzzHfU13c pic.twitter.com/parvk5f67HSeptember 3, 2024
@FirewalkStudios you all didn’t deserve any of this. What you all put out is quality, and I want y’all to know I THOROUGHLY enjoyed my time with #Concord. The grifting, the unnecessary hate, the attacks your studio received is unwarranted, the gaming community let you all down.September 3, 2024
Please don’t punish Firewalk Studios, let them regroup and try their hand at something that isn’t a live service game. Give this team another shot https://t.co/opQENu7AZUSeptember 3, 2024
Firewalk Studios hasn’t commented on the shutdown or the future of Concord beyond today’s announcement, but design director Josh Hamrick expressed gratitude for the shows of support extended to developers. “For all of you reaching out with love, you are the reason we make games,” Hamrick tweeted. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now I’m gonna go win this Area Control match.”
