Why wasn’t it free-to-play? Should Sony have offered it for free through PS Plus? Did a PlayStation login requirement kill it? Would it have somehow sold millions more copies if its characters didn’t have pronouns?
For the past week, gaming watercoolers have been abuzz with questions like this — ranging from the thoughtful to the nonsensical — regarding Sony’s latest release, Concord. The live-service shooter, which launched simultaneously on both PS5 and PC, has had an uncharacteristically rocky launch for a big-budget Sony game. While PS5 stats aren’t available, it’s struggling to find players on Steam. At its peak on launch day, Concord only had 697 concurrent players according to SteamDB. At the time of writing, around 5 p.m. ET on a Wednesday, it only has 171 players. By comparison, Ubisoft’s heavily criticized Skull and Bones has over 1,600 currently playing on Steam.
Even if it’s miraculously doing much better on PS5, it’s safe to say that Concord is struggling to find its audience. Everybody seems to have a different reason as to why, but perhaps it’s not as much of a puzzle as players think it is. Maybe Concord isn’t taking off because players just aren’t interested in it.
What happened?
Concord‘s launch data may sound shocking in a vacuum, but it makes perfect sense for anyone who has been paying attention to the shooter’s marketing history. The project is the debut from Firewalk Studios, a new first-party Sony studio. While it has several veteran multiplayer developers on its team, including those who worked on the Destiny series, it’s not the kind of studio that has name recognition or a track record to judge. With no history to go on, players would only be able to judge the game at face value. Its reveal would be crucial.
That key moment came earlier this May, when Sony rolled out the red carpet for Concord as part of a State of Play stream. Unfortunately, it started on the wrong foot. The stream made the puzzling choice to start by showing a long cinematic cutscene for a game that sports no single-player mode. Many viewers seemed unimpressed, pointing to the fact that it looked and sounded like a riff on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. While Sony would show gameplay after that long introduction, it left a sour first impression.
One month later, a small wave of previews hit the internet — and the impressions were mixed. While some write-ups skewed positive, the one that got people talking the most came from IGN, arguably the gaming world’s leading tastemaker. Writer Stella Chung, an author with a strong expertise in shooters, painted a picture of a middling multiplayer game in desperate need of tweaks. There’s power in a negative impression from a publication as big as IGN; the site similarly published poor impressions of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League ahead of its launch, which contributed to its public perception.
A public beta followed in July, which led to some similarly mixed impressions from press and players alike. Aside from concerns about balance, the consensus seemed to be that Concord just didn’t seem to have many original ideas. Fun games are a dime a dozen in 2024, and Sony’s sales pitch struggled to show off what made its offering so special.
Those whirlwind few months culminated in its quiet launch on August 23. A wave of middling reviews trickled in and the player count failed to take off on PC. It was effectively dead in the water before it could get started.
What’s to blame?
That timeline of events shouldn’t leave much room for confusion. Sony was working with a new IP that didn’t have pre-built hype around it, and each month leading up to its release brought another sour marketing beat. The public perception was that Concord was out of fashion. It looked like Overwatch and sounded like Guardians of the Galaxy, two cultural touchstones that hit the peak of their popularity in the late 2010s. It felt like Sony was chasing outdated trends, and spending a huge chunk of change to do so. Many players just weren’t interested in what it was selling.
How does something so out of touch with what’s hot happen? You could pin that on the unsustainability of ballooning development timelines. According to a lead character designer Jon Weisnewski, Concord was in development for eight years. That would mean it began its life the same year that Overwatch launched, which explains why it has so many similarities from the outside. Video game trends are a moving target. A hot new thing seems to happen every three or four years that entirely upends what’s popular in multiplayer. Concord was late to the hero shooter party by years.
Even then, though, any reasoning like this ultimately points back to the much simpler explanation of players simply not being interested. Marvel Rivals looks to be even more of a direct Overwatch riff than Concord, which draws more of its ideas from Destiny. Its enjoyed a wave of momentum since its reveal thanks to its connection to a popular IP, positive impressions from press and content creators, and a strong closed beta showing. The genre isn’t inherently out of fashion.
Some have argued that Concord is proof that players don’t want live service crammed down their throats. While that’s likely true for some, the continued success of games like Fortnite flies in the face of that logic. Players will still show up for a great live service game in droves if they care about it or if it has good word of mouth. Concord didn’t have the luxury of either.
Other attempts to explain Concord‘s struggles run into similar logic holes. A common explanation pins the failure on Concord‘s $40 price tag. The argument is that it would have worked better as a free-to-play game. While that likely would have helped its player base, a premium price tag isn’t a death sentence. Sony’s mega-popular Helldivers 2 launched at the same $40 price point and players didn’t seem to think twice about picking it up.
Some have argued that Concord should have been offered as a freebie for PS Plus subscribers. That also could have helped, but it’s hard to attribute that decision to success or failure in either way. Helldivers 2 didn’t launch on PS Plus and it found success. On the flipside, Foamstars was offered for free via the service initially and that hasn’t turned the game into a sensation. PS Plus can make a game like Fall Guys, but it won’t break it.
The most downright absurd conspiracy theory is that Concord failed because it’s “woke” due to having a diverse cast of characters. Bad faith arguments like that have been heavily used this year to explain the failure of games like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, but they aren’t based in reality. Overwatch found plenty of success while maintaining a diverse cast. Baldur’s Gate 3 was 2023’s biggest hit and gives players the option to enter queer relationships. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sold 11 million copies in spite of a subset of online commentators complaining about it centering representation in its story. There’s no consistent data that shows that players are unwilling to play a game that a very loud group believes will “go broke” based on inclusive design — even if occasional flops like Redfall open the door for confirmation bias.
The truth is that video game success and failures sometimes have very simple explanations. Palworld had buzz for years before its early access launch due to a “WTF!” trailer that showed its Pokémon-like creatures in sweatshops. It rode that interest to success. Black Myth: Wukong had several high-profile placements in showcases like Summer Game Fest, where it received positive buzz. It also had an enormous marketing budget behind it and the good will of a very excited Chinese market who were eager to see the highly popular Journey to the West adapted into China’s first AAA video game. You could have even seen Balatro‘s surprise success coming if you had been following its well-received Steam demo and buzz from influential content creators before its launch.
Failures are sometimes just as easy to predict. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League got off to a bad start after its first gameplay trailer was revealed to negative reception. A delay to 2024 mounted anxieties around the project, while the virality of poor previews from sites like IGN solidified them. Skull and Bones suffered from a long, troubled development history that had become infamous. Rumors that Ubisoft wanted to cancel the game amid poor focus tests, combined with poor reviews, led it to a logical conclusion.
Very few could have reasonably predicted just how tough Concord‘s launch would go, but it’s been clear since May that it wasn’t leaving a mark. Decisions like pricing certainly factored into its problems, but they don’t get to the core of the issue. If players were interested, it could have overcome any number of hurdles just as countless others have.
What’s next?
The early data would suggest that Concord is already doomed, even if it’s performing better on PS5. Such lower player counts on PC threaten to create long matchmaking queues that push players away. It risks falling into a death spiral as its problems threaten to compound into bigger ones. Conventional wisdom would tell you that it’s bound to suffer the same fate as live service flops like Babylon’s Fall.
There’s still hope for Sony, though. While Concord has endured months of bad press, there’s some positive word of mouth forming in the distance. If social media is any indication, there seems to be an audience that’s clicking with the hero shooter. Even in Digital Trends’ own review, I noted that the core gameplay of Concord is promising. Its problems lie more in its lack of original ideas, an unproven weekly cutscene premise, and a thin launch package.
We know that Firewalk Studios is committed to building Concord out further. The studio has three seasons planned that it intends to stick to, giving it a bit of runway to rebuild momentum through strong updates. Games like Splitgate and No Man’s Sky have come back from bad launches by staying the course and doubling down on what works. Concord could do the same, though it’s hard to imagine such a high-budget production getting much more flexibility from Sony.
There will be plenty of lessons to learn from Concord no matter which direction it ultimately goes in. What’s important is not to get misdirected by noisy conversations as players look to shape its narrative to fit their own. An explanation is lying in plain sight.
Concord is available now on PS5 and PC.
