Concord was a huge disaster for Sony and was pulled offline just two weeks after its launch. It is reported that Ryan Ellis, the Game Director for Concord, stepped down after the game was taken offline, and those who purchased it were refunded, as reported by Kotaku. After this event, the developers at Firewalk Studios are now uncertain of the studio’s future, considering how badly the launch of Concord went.
Concord was a premium game in a sea of free-to-play hero shooters, making it stand out from the crowd for all of the wrong reasons. The game was also only available on PlayStation 5 and PC and cost $39.99 for players to get stuck into. It ended up getting a Metacritic score of 62 and a Metacritic User score of 1.8.
Ryan Ellis has a detailed resume and over seven years at Bungie, but he has reportedly informed the other staff that his role has changed, although his LinkedIn still lists his title as Game Director.
The blog post by Concord’s Director states that the Firewalk team will consider their options regarding what to do next with Concord. However, it’s been reported that some of the developers at Firewalk Studios have “been asked to explore pitches for something completely different,” with some employees refreshing their portfolios in anticipation of potential layoffs. As a result of Concord’s failure, some employees have already left the company.
The blog post that was revealed didn’t really go into any details about what’s next for the game or for Firewalk Studios, other than explaining how those who did purchase the game can obtain a refund.
Whether people will see Concord again in the future remains to be seen. It has now suffered the same fate as Babylon’s Fall, the multiplayer game made by Square Enix, which also had servers go down quickly.
When it comes to multiplayer titles for PlayStation, it doesn’t have the best track record. Once Destiny 2 had partnered up with Sony, they laid off 220 Bungie employees in July, before moving others over to work at PlayStation. Then, Naughty Dog also canceled its planned multiplayer game that was going to be based on The Last of Us.
It would be unsurprising but disappointing if we saw the Firewalk Studios developers experience layoffs, but considering how unsuccessful the game was in every market, it’s likely that we’ll either see the studio dissolve, the staff get laid off, or potentially moved to different studios within PlayStation.
Products mentioned in this post
